'•'/ 



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i 



CECIL 
RHODES 



MAKERS ' OF • THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 

DELANE OF « THE TIMES " 
By Sir E. T. Cook. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
By Lord Charnwood. 

HERBERT SPENCER 

By Hugh S. Elliott. 

ABDUL HAMID 

By Sir Edwin Pears. 

DIAZ 
By David Hannay. 

LI HUNG CHANG 
By J. O. P. Bland. 

BISMARCK 
By C. Grant Robertson. 

VICTOR HUGO 

By Madame Duclaux. 

Each Volume in this Series, which is edited by 
Basil Williams, contains a Frontispiece, Biblio- 
graphy, and Index. 





BT THE SAME AUTHOR 




THE 


LIFE OF WILLIAM 

(Earl of Chatham) 


PITT 


2nd Impression, 1914. Re -issue, 191 5. 


2 Vols. 




(Longmans, 12s.) 





MAKERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
Edited by Basil Williams 



CECIL RHODES 



BY 



BASIL WILLIAMS 

M 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY 

1921 



HTnt 



3n/n 



Printed in Great Britain. 



TO 
The Right Hon. J. X. MERRIMAN 



Forsan et hau olim meminisse juvabit. 



PREFACE 

This book, first planned in 19 14, was interrupted by the 
war. The delay has enabled me to see many papers 
previously inaccessible. In the Bibliography at the end of 
the book I acknowledge my obligations to those who have 
been good enough to talk to me about Rhodes, and to the 
books that have been helpful. To Lord Charnwood I am 
grateful for some valuable suggestions on the proofs. My 
wife has helped me at every stage. I should also like to 
mention my special debt of gratitude to Lord Milner, a 
Trustee, to Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, Acting Secretary, and to 
the Staff of the Rhodes Trust ; to Mr. Wilson Fox, M.P., 
and Mr. D. Malcolm, Directors of the British South Africa 
Company ; and to Colonel Amery, M.P., for their readiness to 
let me see papers in their charge and the interest they have 
taken in my attempt to portray Rhodes. 

Even if I have failed in this attempt, I trust that some- 
thing of the love I have for the South African land and 
people may be found to breathe through these pages. 



B. W. 



Chelsea, 
Michaelmas Day^ 1920. 



CONTENTS 



I. Introductory .... 

II. Early Years .... 

III. The Opening of the Diamond Fields 

IV. The Young Digger .... 
V. Oxford and Kimberley 

VI. Dreams ..... 

VII. The Plunge into Cape Politics . 
VIII. The First Step Northwards — Bechuanaland 
IX. Gold and Diamonds 
X. The Charter ... 

XI. The Pioneers .... 

XII. Rhodesia 

XIII. Prime Minister of the Cape 

XIV. Groote Schuur and the Burlington 
XV. The Raid 

XVI. The New Beginning 
XVII. The St. Martin's Summer 
XVIII. Last Days . 
Bibliography . 
Chronological Table 
Index 



I 
7 

15 
25 
35 
48 

58 
69 

91 
116 
140 
163 
183 
219 
242 
276 
298 
315 
331 
339 
343 



IX 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Bust of Cecil John Rhodes. By J. M. Swan, in Herbert Baker's 
Memorial on Table Mountain. {From a photograph lent by 
Mrs. J. M. Swan) ..... Frontispiece 

On the original pedestal were inscribed Kipling's lines : 

The immense and brooding spirit still shall quicken and control. 
Living he was the land and dead his soul shall be her soul. 

Map of South and Central Africa . . At end of volume 



XI 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

During the sittings of the South African Convention at 
Cape Town, some seven years after Rhodes's death, an 
EngHshwoman, recently landed, the daughter of an English 
statesman, was describing to some of us her first impressions 
of the Cape Peninsula. The charm of Cape Town and its 
surroundings, Rondebosch, Wynberg, Sea Point, Muizen- 
berg, lovely even in their names ; the Mountain dominating 
them all ; the clear, clean South African air and its wonder- 
ful light — these she felt and saw as all must who have 
ever touched there ; but there was something more, a 
haunting sense of some dominating personaUty present but 
unseen everywhere. Table Mountain with the town and 
villages nestling in its kloofs seemed to have some great 
spirit brooding over it, and in men's talk there was always 
a reserve as of some idea too familiar yet too impressive to 
be much talked about. Then it had dawned upon her that 
the haunting personality was that of Rhodes ; and the 
mystery was explained. For everything appeared to call 
up associations with Rhodes. The statue of the old Dutch 
governor. Van Riebeeck, on the quay, to greet the stranger 
on his arrival in South Africa, was his gift ; the road round 
the Mountain was planned by him with the loving thought 
that " human beings would walk that road long after he 
had gone " ; the old Dutch block-house on the Mountain 
was preserved from destruction by him ; Groote Schuur at 
Rondebosch, with its ample grounds and its masses of 
hydrangeas, was his home, left for the pubhc seivice of 
a united South Africa ; in the tiny cottage by the sea 
at Muizenberg he breathed his last painful breath; the 

I B 



2 CECIL RHODES 

monument on the Mountain side marks the seat where he 
^used to sit musing and staring at the view of both oceans, or 
gazing towards his own country in the north, 

Like stout Cortez . . . 
Silent upon a peak in Darien. 

The very work of Union, for which the chosen men of 
every state in South Africa were then assembled at Cape 
Town, was his constant preoccupation, and was now 
recaUing him at every turn. " Oh, if we only had Rhodes 
here ! " exclaimed a Dutchman from the Transvaal, when 
some almost fatal obstacle had presented itself in the 
Convention — a Dutchman, who in Rhodes's lifetime had 
been fighting him and his countrymen. " Let us not 
bother about these details, we are out for the big thing," 
said another delegate, this one a dear friend of Rhodes, 
unconsciously echoing almost the very words of his chief. 

Nor were these experiences singular or confined to the 
period of the National Convention, when men's minds 
were all intent on one of Rhodes's great ideas. The German 
Colonial Secretary, Demburg, who visited South Africa a 
Uttle later, had the same vivid sense of his personaUty ; 
for what, he said, impressed him most in the country was 
the omnipresent glamour of Rhodes. Later still, on the 
eve of the war, the feeUng of his presence is as fresh and 
living. " The spirit of the man permeates the place," 
writes a visitor to Groote Schuur in 1914, an ancient 
. opponent of Rhodes, not merely because of the books, 
the old Dutch objects and furniture he collected there, 
the rare trees he planted and the animals he accHmatized 
in the grounds, and his favourite view from the stoep, still 
remembered, but for the passions he aroused and the ideas 
he stimulated. 

This vivid remembrance of Rhodes was not confined to 
the Cape Peninsula, his home, if he can be said ever to 
have had one, for the last ten years of his Hfe. For many 
years after his death it was the same throughout South 
Africa. In Natal, where he was least known, the few men 
who knew or worked with Rhodes are pointed out to the 
stranger at the Club as among those specially to be noted 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

and talked to ; and sooner or later the visitor is bound 
to hear the story of Rhodes winning over their Prime 
Minister, Escombe, till then somewhat suspicious, by the 
invitation to Groote Schuur, to discuss South African 
Union, with its postscript : " besides, the hydrangeas are 
in full beauty : it would be a pity to miss them." In the 
Transvaal and the Free State, where he was once regarded 
by many besides old President Kruger as " Apollyon, a 
financier, and the foul fiend himself ... if Rhodes had 
not been bom . . . South Africa would have been little 
less than a paradise,'* his death has mellowed men's judge- 
ments, and it is remembered that with all his faults and 
in spite of the Raid he was a great South African, while 
in Johannesburg it is not forgotten that he was one of the 
founders of its prosperity. In the native territories of the 
Cape his creation, the Glen Grey system, has profoundly 
modified the condition and outlook of the black community. 
Among the Dutch of the Cape he is not only remembered 
for the betrayal of the Raid but as a farmer such as them- 
selves, who loved the land as they do and felt with them in 
all their troubles. The Kimberley of to-day, for good or 
evil, is merely what he made it by the De Beers amalgama- 
tion ; and Bechuanaland, " the Suez Canal to the interior," 
might never have been British, but for Rhodes. For 
Rhodesia he is the one man ; Jameson indeed is remembered 
with affection ; Grey and Milton and all the directors of 
the Chartered Company had their good qualities ; but since 
he died it has never been quite the same there for white 
men or natives. The lame dogs among the whites he helped 
materially or cheered with brave words ; the stalwart felt 
that his curt approval was worth working for ; and all 
knew that, whatever might be the difficulties, he would 
surely be there to see the country through. By the 
natives he was trusted blindly for his just dealings and the 
respect he showed them ; to him alone among white men 
they gave the royal salute of their tribe. Here above all 
his memory is cherished, in the country he won and loved ; 
and here he rests on the hill called the View of the World, 
amid the grandeur and loveliness of the Matoppos. 

Even South Africa's wide expanses were too narrow a 



4 CECIL RHODES 

field for Rhodes. He is the only colonial statesman who 
has to such extent struck the imagination and affected 
the thoughts of EngUshmen at home and throughout the 
world. The very suddenness with which he loomed upon 
the outer world helped to concentrate attention upon him. 
A few years before he became Prime Minister of the Cape 
he had hardly been heard of in England. During a debate 
of 1884 Lord Randolph Churchill spoke scornfully of " some 
cypher " appointed to supersede the missionary Mackenzie 
in Bechuanaland, a " cypher " whose appointment the 
Minister was hard put to it to defend as of "a gentleman 
of some distinction, who had always shown himself to be 
a great sympathizer with the native races." Less than six 
years later the " cypher's " name was on every tongue as 
the autocrat of one of the greatest industrial undertakings 
in the world, as Prime Minister of his colony and as the 
founder of what promised to be a vast new dominion for 
the Empire. At home, indeed, the quality of his eminence 
was never so incontestable as at one time it was in South 
Africa. To many he was a bugbear — the type of the 
dishonest and unscrupulous pohtician, who uses politics to 
rig the market and the wealth thus acquired to corrupt 
politics, a man who filched away an empire and slaughtered 
innocent savages or plotted against a friendly state to put 
money into his own and his fellow-conspirators* pockets. 
" Rank selfishness and an inextinguishable love of power 
and renown, of adulation and of praise are the prevalent 
characteristics which distinguish this eminent statesman 
and conqueror from the small fry," such is another, perhaps 
extreme, instance of the form of obloquy to which he was 
exposed. On the other hand, to many more he had soon 
become a national hero, on a par with a Clive or a Warren 
Hastings, and by the few who consorted familiarly with 
him he was treated as little short of infallible and impecc- 
able. Since his death Oxford and its Rhodes scholars 
have helped to keep his memory green and to further his 
ideals even beyond the shores of England. At Oxford his 
statue looks proudly down upon The High, taking rank 
above the sovereigns of his day, as a Founder no less than 
William of Wykeham, Chichele, Waynflete or Wolsey. 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

In our law courts Rhodes's words of some thirty years ago 
still have weight in a decision on the fate of a vast territory 
in the heart of Africa ; and for long ardent young 
missionaries of Empire have been devoting themselves to 
the problems of Imperial government on principles which 
he initiated. 

To-day, except in his own Rhodesia, the glamour 
of his great name is somewhat dulled. Many of the 
faithful friends, men like Jameson and Grey, jealous 
guardians of the reputation and tradition of Rhodes, which 
they themselves had helped to form, have passed away. 
The war, which raised so many new problems and brought 
forward so many new men, has for the time being obscured 
Rhodes and the Rhodes ideas. South Africa itself, where 
he played his chief part, no longer holds that prominent 
place in the world's eye which it held for ten years and 
more before his death and during the decade which 
succeeded it. Perhaps by very reason of this partial eclipse 
it is opportune to attempt another judgement on Rhodes. 
Hitherto most of the lives or sketches of him have been 
written under the attractive magnetism of his living 
personality. To-day it may be possible to take a more 
dispassionate view. Most of the written material ever 
likely to be available for his Ufe is now accessible, and so 
much has happened in the last eighteen years that his 
career can be judged not only by the passions which it 
raised but by the test of the effects which it has produced, 
On the other hand, it has still not been too late to gather 
living impressions of the man from those who saw him 
plain, who knew him and listened to his actual words, 
who can describe his gestures, the tone of his voice, and 
some of his unguarded moments. Such evidence is especi- 
ally valuable in the case of a man like Rhodes, who wrote 
very few intimate letters and received few. For the 
account of such a man depends for its value not so much 
on what he did as on why and how he did it ; and that can 
only be obtained by close acquaintance with the man 
himself. 

This book is not intended to be an unrelieved panegyric 
^of Rhodes or a tract for the imperialism he preached and 



6 CECIL RHODES 

worked for. But it frankly sets forth with the behef that 
-he was, with all his grievous faults, a great man, and that 
at the root of his imperiaHsm were quahties that have 
done good service to mankind. His character was cast in 
a large mould, with enormous defects corresponding with 
his eminent virtues. But, from the recital of these short- 
comings no less than that of his achievements, help, we 
think, may be gained by those moved by the same spirit 
of devotion to what they beHeve best for England and the 
world. As to his creed of imperiahsm, a worthy spirit will 
be engendered if we look, not to the blatant and exaggerated 
manifestations of national arrogance it contained, but to its 
deep sense of public duty, the tenacity of purpose it implied, 
and above all to the underljdng S5mipathy and desire for 
co-operation even with opponents, without which it was 
meaningless. 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY YEARS 

Cecil John Rhodes, the fifth son of the Rev. F. W. 
Rhodes, Vicar of Bishop Stortford, was born on July 5, 
1853. Since the seventeenth century his paternal ancestors 
had been farmers, first in the Midlands and in Cheshire, then 
on the outskirts of London near the Gray's Inn Road. 
His great-grandfather Samuel besides his farm had large 
brick and tile works at Dalston, on a property now built 
over and still owned by the Rhodes trustees. His grand- 
father William was a cowkeeper in a large way at IsHngton 
and also had property at Ley ton Grange in Essex. Rhodes, 
therefore, had good reason in after fife for his boast to the 
Dutch farmers that he was one with them, as he also came 
of farming stock. The father, F. W. Rhodes, who was 
bom in 1806, and educated at Harrow and Trinity, held 
the vicarage of Bishop Stortford for twenty-seven years, 
imtil two years before his death in 1878. Himself one of 
a large family, he also had many children, a daughter by 
a first wife and nine sons and two daughters by his second 
wife, Louisa Peacock, one of a Lincolnshire family, whom 
he married in 1844. Two of the nine sons died in infancy, 
leaving, besides the daughter of the first marriage, Edith 
and Louisa, Herbert, Frank, Cecil John, Ernest, Elmhirst, 
Arthur and Bernard, to be sent out into the world by the 
vicar and his wife Louisa. 

The vicar, tall and spare in appearance, was a man of 
system and of strong prejudices. To his parishioners he 
gave good sound doctrine in his sermons, which always 
lasted ten minutes, no more and no less ; he saw to the 
education of their children, being a generous benefactor to 

7 



8 CECIL RHODES 

the old grammar school of the place and estabUshing a 
training school for mistresses in elementary schools ; he 
was also noted for his charity and his courteous bearing to 
all, and is said to have had a horror of lawyers. He kept 
his large family in due respect of him and brought them 
up on strictly religious principles. They were all expected 
to take their turn teaching in the Sunday school, and 
received pious books as a reward for their pains. His 
hope was that all his sons should follow his own example 
by taking Orders and become, as he was wont to say, " the 
angels of the Seven Churches," a hope doomed to complete 
disappointment. The mother, who died when Cecil was 
twenty, is said to have been a woman of great charm and 
ease of manner, whose sympathy and tenderness gave 
some relief from the vicar's Spartan principles. Thanks 
to her sympathy, perhaps quite as much as to the father's 
pungent originahty, many of the children developed on 
unconventional Unes. It was not the custom for this 
crowd of brothers and sisters, so one of them records, to 
confide much in one another, and each grew up on his 
own Hues ; but at least they learned not only to hold their 
own with one another but also, in spite of passing quarrels, 
to stick together and face the world as no mean clan. 
Throughout life Cecil, though he may have passed dis- 
paraging remarks on the pursuits of some of his brothers 
and sisters, never left any of them in the lurch, but saw that 
they had the opportunities he was able to give them. The 
favourite brother of the clan was the second son, Frank, 
who inherited all his mother's charm but, though a gallant 
soldier, Httle of the father's force. 

Herbert, the eldest son, went to Winchester and Frank 
to Eton, but when it came to Cecil, at the age of nine, he 
was put as a day-boy to the local grammar school. Here 
he gave no signs of great distinction. A school-fellow 
writing to him when he had become famous recalls that he 
gained the silver medal for elocution, an art in which he 
afterwards showed but httle proficiency, and he is stated 
to have taken interest in history, geography and classics ; 
but he must have been a good cricketer, for he attained the 
glory of the school XL at the age of thirteen. He was 



EARLY YEARS 9 

always rather a shy, reserved boy, with a dehcate appear- 
ance, though never wanting in spirit and power of concen- 
tration. The motto he chose at the age of thirteen for 
one of those quaint confessional albums, so dear to the 
Middle Victorians, was "to do or to die " ; even then 
he had decided that a single life was better than to be 
married ; and in one of Frank's early letters home he is 
already spoken of as " long-headed Cecil," as if this were 
a well-recognized trait in his character. 

Though reserved at home, he appears to have blossomed 
out more in what was a second home to several of the 
Rhodes children in Lincolnshire. Mrs. Rhodes's sister, 
Sophia Peacock, Uved at Sleaford Manor in the Belvoir 
country, where she often had one or more of the vicar's 
children to stay, her special favourite being Frank, whom 
she practically adopted. Cecil was often there for the 
holidays, and found himself in a circle of relations and 
acquaintances. His aunt Sophy was always a good friend 
to him, and she was one of the few to whom in those early 
days he confided his plans and aspirations. Some Willson 
cousins lived two miles away at Ranceby ; the Finch 
Hattons at Haverholm close by, and the family of Mr. 
Yerburgh, rector of Sleaford, were close friends ; and 
Frank had Eton companions to stay there. In those days 
Cecil could put up a good fight with his fists, as one of 
his friends, a much bigger boy, whom Cecil had thought 
too " cheeky," had ruefully to admit. One of those who 
remembered him best at Sleaford was the rector's son, 
Robert, a lifelong friend. The two used to go riding 
about the country together, Cecil fond of the exercise but 
even then remarkable for his bad seat in the saddle, a fault 
of which practice in the Belvoir country itself never cured 
him. Though quite a young lad at the time, Cecil, Yerburgh 
used to say, showed a most precocious power of observation ; 
instead of gazing at the pretty girl looking over a gate, he 
was all eyes for the country he passed through, and always 
remembered which farm was well cultivated and which 
slackly managed. These early Lincolnshire friendships 
completed the good grounding for fife which he got from 
the give and take of the large family at the Vicarage and 



10 CECIL RHODES 

the rough and tumble of the Grammar School. Unconven- 
tional and original he always was, and his unconventionaUty 
was no doubt accentuated by the turbulent life on the 
Diamond Fields ; but he also always kept an air of good 
breeding and a dignity of bearing, sure passports to the 
most exclusive as to the roughest society ; and he very 
early learned the gift of appraising men at their true value 
to himself To this atmosphere of squire and parson in 
which he was reared at Bishop Stortford and Sleaford he 
owed, too, his reverence for the feudal traditions of the old 
squirearchy, with its high if limited sense of public duty, 
and his lifelong respect for the profession of a land- 
owner. 

In 1869, at the age of sixteen, Cecil left the Grammar 
School and continued his studies under his father's eye. 
Herbert and Frank had already disappointed the vicar's 
hope that they should take orders, Frank being bent on 
Sandhurst and Herbert having already taken to a roving 
life abroad. Ultimately four of the brothers joined the 
army. " My father," afterwards said Rhodes, '' was anxious 
that they should enter the Church as a preliminary step 
to becoming angels : they prefer being angels through the 
Army and I don't blame them " ; the other three all went to 
the Colonies. But at sixteen Cecil had not entirely rejected 
the idea of the Church as a profession, although his first 
choice lay elsewhere. " I cannot deny," he wrote to his 
Aunt Sophy, " for it would only be hypocrisy to say other- 
wise, that I still above everything would like to be a 
barrister ; but I agree with you it is a very precarious 
profession. Next to that I think a clergyman's life is the 
nicest ; and therefore I shall most earnestly try to go to 
College, because I have fully determined to be one of these 
two, and a College education is necessary for both. I 
think that as a barrister a man may be just as good a 
Christian as in any other profession " ; nor should the 
jolly ending of the letter be omitted, if only to show that 
even in those early years he was not too much of a prig : 
" How proud you must have been of Frankie's success [in 
the Eton and Harrow match] ! I can assure you we were 
in the highest state of excitement ... a great cricketer . . . 



EARLY YEARS ii 

said he preferred Frank's play to any on the field, because 
he had never seen anything equal to his defence." 

However, neither College nor the Bar were yet to be 
approached by this determined young man. His health 
was weakly, and there were even fears that he might be 
consumptive, a disease of which several of the family 
showed symptoms. His father, therefore, determined to 
send him abroad to try the effect of a sea voyage and 
a better climate. Herbert had already set up as a 
planter in Natal, so to join Herbert in Natal Cecil was 
despatched on a saiUng vessel. The voyage to Durban 
took him seventy days, and on September i, 1870, he 
first set foot on African soil, a tall, lanky, anaemic, fair- 
haired boy, shy and reserved in bearing. Nelson boarding 
a man-of-war for the first time, when " nobody had been 
apprised of the boy's coming," could hardly have felt more 
solitary and forlorn than this seventeen-year-old boy on 
landing upon the scene of his hfe's work. For Herbert, 
the only soul he knew in South Africa, was away upon 
some expedition ; he had, however, left a message with 
his friend Dr. Sutherland, the Surveyor-General of the 
Colony, to befriend his brother. So to Dr. Sutherland's 
house at Pietermaritzburg Cecil found his way. There he 
was kindly entertained until his brother's return. He is 
said to have spent most of his time there reading, and still 
apparently used to talk of taking Orders to his host, who 
used to prophesy that he would end his days as a village 
parson in England. 

Towards the end of the year Herbert returned from his 
expedition, and the two brothers started off for the 
Umkomanzi Valley, south of Pietermaritzburg, where the 
elder had already taken a farm. It was in a settlement 
where a first attempt was being made to start cotton- 
planting in Natal ; their friends in town all warned them 
that the attempt would prove a dismal failure. However, 
they found that the pioneer of the settlement, one 
Conyngham, and Powys, the owner of a neighbouring farm 
specially noted for its beauty, had had some success. Their 
own farm had first to be cleared of the dense bush which 
grew luxuriantly in the hot steamy valley ; this they did 



12 CECIL RHODES 

with the help of their Kaffir labourers in time for a first 
year's crop. The crop proved a failure, as their friends 
had predicted ; the cotton, planted too closely in rows, 
had become tangled and matted, and fell a prey to the 
caterpillar and bore -worm. A few bales were picked, 
but not enough to pay expenses. Nothing daunted, they 
cleared off more bush for the second year's crop and planted 
the forty-five acres they now had for cotton on a new 
system, with much greater intervals between the plants, 
and at every 80 feet a small patch of meaUes, which attracted 
the grub from the cotton ; the numerous monkeys in the 
district were also attracted by the meaHes, but the brothers 
had no objection to their visits as long as they confined 
their depredations to the com cobs. On this second year's 
crop they made a good profit, and obtained a prize for their 
cotton at a local agricultural show. By the end of 1872 
the Rhodes brothers expected to have 100 acres cleared 
for planting, and were already regarded as among the most 
successful planters of the settlement ; ^ their method of 
ploughing instead of hoeing between the rows being looked 
on as a specially commendable innovation. 

The Ufe on the settlement was hard and simple, but had 
its attractions. Herbert and Cecil had built themselves 
two Uttle huts, one for sleeping, the other as a store and 
living room ; here they lived, waited on by a Kaffir servant. 
They had pleasant neighbours within riding distance, one, 
with whom Cecil formed a close friendship, being H. C. 
Hawkins, the son of a Natal magistrate, and a relation of 
the Provost of Oriel. With him Cecil kept up his classics, 
and formed plans for saving up enough money to go to 
Oxford, an ambition which only one of them fulfilled. 
Cecil, it is also recorded, no doubt as the scholar and the 
youngest member of the settlement, was chosen to respond 
to the toast of The Ladies at the banquet of the agricultural 
show at which his cotton samples were exhibited. Herbert, 
a restless and adventurous fellow, was more noted for his 
feats of daring, especially for an exploit in swimming into 
the Umkomanzi, when in raging flood, and cutting the 
traces of a team of oxen which were being helplessly swept 

^ See Notes on Natal, by John Robinson. 1872. 



EARLY YEARS 13 

down with their wagon, and so enabhng them to swim 
ashore. 

Though Cecil in the intervals of bush clearing and cotton 
planting studied his classics and dreamed of Oxford, he also 
gave early evidence of his practical eye for a business 
bargain, keeping a shrewd look out for investments and 
openings in the colony. At this stage he had no capital 
to spare, but during the year after he had left Natal, when 
he had scraped some together, he put his previous observa- 
tion to good use. To his friend. Dr. Sutherland, who acted 
as his agent, he wrote several anxious letters on the placing 
of the few pounds he had available. Farms had been 
suggested to him, but he would have nothing to say to 
farms, unless he had seen them for himself and was assured 
of their accessibility and good water-supply; and finally, 
after much consideration, he pitches on the new railway 
under construction between Durban and The Point at the 
landing-stage, which this wise young man of nineteen quite 
rightly judged to be a profitable investment. 

The little settlement on the Umkomanzi was short- 
hved. By the end of 1871 one neighbour of the Rhodes's, 
finding that the sluit, on which he depended for water, 
had dried up, was forced to leave ; Powys, the owner of the 
lovely farm, had all his cotton dried up and was burned 
out of his house. Others went to try their luck at the 
newly discovered diamond diggings, whither Herbert also 
went to prospect in May 1871. Cecil looked after the 
cotton by himself till October, when he followed Herbert 
to Griqualand West ; but the Natal plantation was not 
finally abandoned till the end of 1872, after Herbert 
had returned to put in one more crop., " It really seems 
an ill-fated valley,'' was Cecil's parting verdict, and he 
thought his brother wise not to drop any more money on 
it. " You would be surprised," he wrote to Dr. Sutherland, 
" if I told you what a sink it has been. I believe if one 
only kept on, it has a capacity to absorb any amount 
of capital." But though an expensive experiment, this 
plantation was a good training-ground for Rhodes. He 
learned here to understand something of the difficulties of 
South African farming and how to overcome them ; he 



14 CECIL RHODES 

gained his first experience of natives, improved in health, 
developed business capacity, and was enabled, before he 
was of age, to be self-reliant and fend for himself as few 
young Englishmen of his class are qualified to do. Above 
all, he acquired those habits of work, and that loathing of 
a loafer which he kept to the end. It is indeed amusing 
to find him writing home at this tender age to urge that his 
elder brother Frank should " come out here before he gets 
his commission, as it will be very good for him, so much 
better than the do-nothing life he is leading now/* 

" Ah yes," he would say in later days to the critics who 
told him a thing was impossible, " they told me I couldn't 
grow cotton." 



CHAPTER III 

THE OPENING OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS 

In the year 1867 Schalk van Niekerk, a Dutch farmer, was 
calling at his friend Jacobs's house near the Orange River. 
The Jacobs children were playing at marbles, and Van 
Niekerk's eye was attracted by the extraordinary brilliancy 
of one of the stones they were using. " Take it away with 
you, by all means," said Jacobs, *' if you fancy it," and 
accordingly Van Niekerk, who regarded it merely as a 
curiosity, pocketed it. Shortly afterwards he met the trader 
John O'Reilly and pulled it out to show him. O'Reilly 
thought it might be valuable and took it off to get the 
opinion of some diamond merchants ; they told him it was 
worth nothing ; but when it was passed on to the Colesberg 
magistrate, Lorenzo Boyes, he was so convinced of its 
value that he sent it to the Cape mineralogist. Dr. 
Atherstone, who pronounced it to be a diamond worth 
£500. At this price it was bought by the Governor, Sir 
Philip Wodehouse. The next important find was two years 
later, when a native witch-doctor brought the same van 
Niekerk a large and brilliant stone he had found near the 
Orange River, and was using as a charm in the course of 
his calling ; the Dutchman, now awake to the value of 
such stones, at once offered the witch-doctor all he stood 
possessed of, namely 500 sheep, 10 oxen, and one horse, 
for his charm. Van Niekerk did well by his bargain, for 
he sold the diamond, an exceptionally fine one that turned 
83 carats, for over ;f 11,000 to a Hopetown trader, who sold 
it again to Lord Dudley for ;f25,ooo. This diamond became 
famous as " The Star of South Africa." 

At first it was imagined by many people that these 

15 



i6 CECIL RHODES 

discoveries were mere freaks ; in fact, a Mr. Gregory, the 
expert agent of a London jeweller, reported that there 
were no signs of diamond-bearing soil in South Africa.^ 
But many colonists on the look out for adventure and an 
easy fortune were less incredulous, and began to search on 
the banks of the Orange River and along the Vaal, near its 
junction with the Hart River. In the latter half of 1869 
diamonds were found in the bed of the Vaal, near the mission 
station of Hebron, and parties of diggers flocked to that 
neighbourhood. Among the first were J. B. Robinson and 
Stafford Parker, long well-known names in the Diamond 
Fields, and a party from Natal under Captain Rolieston. 
Within a short space of time the bend of the Vaal for eighty 
miles from Hebron to the junction with the Hart River was 
dotted all along with little mining camps designated Gong 
Gong, Forlorn Hope, Blue Jacket, Larkin's Flat, etc., 
outlandish names to our ears but familiar enough among 
the red sands and the white ants of Kalgoorlie, the snows 
of the Yukon, the scrub and sand-storms of the veld, or 
wherever the strange wild brotherhood of prospector and 
digger may chance to be gathered together. Large settle- 
ments sprang up at Pniel, on the south bank of the river, 
and at Klipdrift, now Barkly West, on the opposite bank, 
which by 1870 already had brick buildings and shops, and 
boasted of a newspaper of its own. The soil from the 
river-bed was sifted in rough hand-cradles by the diggers, 
and so successful were they that within a few months 
some 10,000 prospectors had been attracted to a 'district 
hitherto inhabited only by a few missionaries and wander- 
ing natives. 

Soon, however, the river diggings were entirely thrown 
into the shade by a new discovery on the open veld. In 
September 1870, diamonds were found on the farm Dutoits- 
pan, only twenty miles from Klipdrift. Speculators, 
scenting a profit, soon appeared on the scene and offered 
what seemed fabulous prices to the simple farmers of the 
district. Dutoitspan was sold for £2600, Bultfontein near 
by for ^2000, and Voruitzicht for ;f6ooo, the purchasers of 

^ Hence the Diamond Fields euphemism for any outrageous mis- 
statement as "a Gregory." 



THE OPENING OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS 17 

the last being the Port Ehzabeth firm of D. A. & N. J. 
de Beers. All these farms could have been contained 
within a ring fence of fifteen miles. The new owners, 
however, were unable to stem the rush of prospectors on 
to their property, and the most they could do was to exact 
a monthly licence fee of 7s. 6d. or los. for each claim of 
thirty feet square. Dutoitspan was rushed at the end of 
1870, Bultfontein a few months later ; part of the De 
Beers farm in May ; in the following July Rawstorne, a 
prospector from Colesberg in Cape Colony, discovered the 
first diamond on the kopje, under the roots of an old thorn 
tree which crowned its grassy knoll. The original claims 
on Voruitzicht were then christened Old De Beers ; the 
kopje ground, some ten acres in extent, Colesberg Kopje 
or De Beers New Rush and later Kimberley, after the 
Colonial Secretary of the day. The river diggings were 
soon deserted for these dry diggings, where the diamonds 
were more plentiful and easier to find ; for along the Vaal 
pits had to be sunk in the heavy gravel, thick with boulders, 
whereas here the diamonds could be picked out of the light 
surface soil like plums out of a cake. As the fame of the 
new Diamond Fields near the Vaal spread, prospectors kept 
arriving thither not only from every part of South Africa, 
but from Europe, Australia and America, and within their 
radius of five miles a huge canvas city sprang up where 
there had hitherto been nothing but bare veld, an even 
more marvellous transformation than that of the eighty 
mile bend in the Vaal River. 

The discovery of the Diamond Fields opened a new 
chapter in South African history, in which the eighteen- 
year-old cotton planter of the Umkomanzi valley was 
destined to play a principal part. Hitherto South Africa, 
with its two colonies of the Cape and Natal and its two 
Boer repubUcs named after the Orange River and the 
Vaal, had been a poor and rather unhappy land, troubled 
with internal dissensions among the whites and with 
constant danger from the natives. In 1871 Cape Colony 
was bounded on the east by the Great Kei River and on the 
north by the Orange River. On its eastern borders it was 
subject to constant alarms of raids from the large native 

c 



i8 CECIL RHODES 

territory of Kaffraria, extending from the Great Kei to 
the Natal borders, over which the Imperial government 
exercised a shadowy protectorate. In that year it had 
added to its difficulties by taking over from the Imperial 
authorities the administration of Basutoland, a native 
state nowhere touching its own borders. It still had that 
unhappy form of government, an executive directly ap- 
pointed by the governor, and an elected parliament 
responsible for legislation and finance but with no authority 
over the executive : the controversies to which this system 
gave rise were accentuated by the cleavage between the 
original Dutch colonists, who predominated in the western 
province, and the English settlers of 1820 in the eastern 
province, the Dutch in the aggregate being in the majority. 
Except for the merchants, forwarding agents and shop- 
keepers in the ports and towns, the population was almost 
entirely agricultural and pastoral, pursuits to which the 
Dutch took more kindly than the English. It could, it is 
true, boast of the only completed railway in South Africa, 
a line sixty miles long from Cape Town to Wellington, but 
financially it was at a low ebb, with a Budget showing 
a revenue of only £543,583 to meet an expenditure of 
£604,926. Natal was happier in having a more homo- 
geneous population, for most of the original Boer emigrants, 
who had borne the brunt of the fighting against the Zulu 
invaders, had retired in disgust to the Transvaal when 
Natal was finally proclaimed a British colony in 1843. 
The chief difficulty there was the enormous preponderance 
of the native over the white population and the proximity 
of the ferocious Zulu race ; but the English and Scottish 
settlers were an independent, self-reliant people, who were 
not averse to the isolation from other parts of South Africa 
which their geographical position imposed upon them. 
Besides these two colonies there were the two Boer 
republics. The Free State had first been settled in 1828 ; 
in 1848 it was annexed by Sir Harry Smith and the Boer 
leader Pretorius defeated at Boomplaats ; six years later, 
much against its will, its independence was restored because 
the Imperial government had changed its mind and decided 
to have no responsibilities north of the Orange River. 



THE OPENING OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS 19 

Since then its people had been ruled wisely and successfully 
by their President, John Brand, though with occasional 
wars against their neighbours, the Basutos, who could not 
be controlled either by the Imperial authorities or the Cape. 
The Transvaal to the north of the Free State had not had a 
happy history since its first invasion by the Cape Boers of 
1835, who were anxious to escape from British interference. 
Its independence was not recognized by Great Britain till 
1852, and for eight years longer it contained four separate 
republics. Its unification in i860 did not much mend 
matters, for it had constant fights with the native tribes 
in the north and west and was always on the verge of 
bankruptcy. 

One important result of the large influx of strangers, 
chiefly of the English race, to the Diamond Fields was to 
redress somewhat the balance between the Dutch and 
English races in South Africa. It also for the first time 
introduced an industrial element into the country ; for not 
only diamond digging itself soon developed into a regular 
industry, but it stimulated others required to supply the 
needs of the diggers. Again, agriculture throughout South 
Africa was in time encouraged to increased production by 
the wants of the large and extravagant new population. 
All this additional prosperity affected for the better the 
public as well as the private finances of South Africans, 
not only in Cape Colony, the state most concerned, but 
elsewhere also. The state of the natives was even more 
profoundly influenced. Hitherto they had for the most 
part lived isolated in their tribes, comparatively little 
changed by the advent of the Europeans : some indeed did 
agricultural work for neighbouring farmers and a few were 
employed as house servants or grooms. But soon the 
diggers required an almost inexhaustible supply of natives 
to help them with the drudgery of their labour, and the 
supply in the neighbourhood of the fields was extremely 
limited. They offered high wages for natives, and in an 
incredibly short time the rumour of these good wages and 
the good food offered, and of the chance of buying European 
firearms and ammunition, spread to every native kraal 
throughout South Africa. Natives came trudging hundreds 



20 CECIL RHODES 

of miles from Kaffraria beyond the eastern province, from 
Zululand, from the northern fastnesses of the Transvaal, 
from the far distant regions of the Zambesi and even beyond 
to take up the new work. And they never came to stay. 
They remained long enough to earn their good wages, and 
to buy their guns and ammunition, and then trudged back 
to their far-away homes, bringing news to their own tribes 
of other tribesmen they had met and of the ways of the 
white men. Thus the solidarity and isolation of the tribes 
was gradually modified, and the natives themselves acquired 
new wants and became more ready to secure their satisfac- 
tion by closer association with Europeans. In a word, the 
influence of the Diamond Fields proved a first and most 
important step to the penetration by Europeans of vast 
native districts, where they had hitherto been almost 
unknown or dreaded as a terrible danger. 

Unfortunately another result of the discovery of the 
Diamond Fields was to add one more to the many causes 
of grievance of the Dutch, and to reveal one more change 
in the kaleidoscopic poUcy of the Imperial government 
in South Africa. Great Britain, which since the cession of 
1806 had paid heavily in warfare and expense for its South 
African possessions, had chopped and changed its frontier 
policy with successive secretaries of state and governors of 
the Cape, sometimes aggressive, sometimes taking a long 
step backwards. By 1871 nearly everybody at home was 
tired of South Africa : the onerous charge of Basutoland 
had been shuffled off on to the Cape and it had been laid 
down as a definite instruction that the Orange River was 
to be the northern Umit of our responsibiUties. It so 
happened, however, that both the river diggings and the 
dry diggings were discovered in Griqualand West, virtually 
a no-man's land north of the Orange River, west of the Free 
State and south-west of the Transvaal, over which a small 
tribe of Griquas, ruled by the chief Waterboer, roved at 
will. It was obvious that this large influx of adventurers, 
many of them lawless and turbulent, could not be left 
without a government or be subjected to the whims of a 
semi-savage chieftain. The question arose who should 
govern them. The Transvaal Boers had never been dis- 



THE OPENING OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS 21 

posed to abide by any arbitrary limits to their roaming 
disposition, and had for some time cast a covetous eye on 
the pasture grounds of the Griquas along the Vaal and 
Hart Rivers and the neighbouring settlements of the 
Batlapins and Barolongs farther north on the edge 
of Bechuanaland. 

Accordingly when the river diggings were opened 
President Pretorius claimed the right of keeping order 
there with his Transvaal police and magistrates, and even 
had the happy thought of giving an exclusive concession 
for diamonds to three of his countrymen. The Diggers 
Committee, elected by the diggers to maintain order, 
riposted by proclaiming themselves an independent re- 
public, and though the President withdrew the obnoxious 
concession and tried the effect of a personal visit to the 
diggings, he made no impression on the headstrong com- 
munity on his borders. The dry diggings in their turn 
were claimed as coming within the jurisdiction of the 
Free State ; and it must be admitted that the claim 
seemed reasonable. It was hardly disputed that Water- 
boer's country had been treated as part of the Orange River 
Sovereignty until that territory was returned to the Free 
State Boers in 1854 ; and, though Waterboer had disputed 
their authority, the Boers had never abandoned their 
claim. Accordingly Brand sent his magistrates and police 
to Pniel and the dry diggings. He failed, it is true, in his 
attempt to stop a rush at Bultfontein, for the miners refused 
to regard the Free State commando sent to maintain order 
otherwise than as a huge joke and invited its members to 
dismount and have a drink with them. But on the whole 
he managed to establish some sort of order in a very unruly 
community : a school, a courthouse and a prison were built, 
and the Free State magistrate became popular and respected. 

But the Colonial Secretary in the Cape Executive had 
from the outset made up his mind that the Diamond Fields 
must be brought within the British dominions. Robert 
Southey was a remarkable man. When quite young he 
had come out with the hardy settlers of 1820 and by this 
time had become the most efficient and powerful Minister in 
the Government of Cape Colony. Some of his ideas were 



22 CECIL RHODES 

not unlike those with which Rhodes after him was inspired. 
Apart from any question of financial advantage to the 
Cape, he was convinced that a bankrupt state like the 
Transvaal or a small pastoral community such as the Free 
State were quite incapable of governing the turbulent 
crowd on the Diamond Fields ; he also had taken a longer 
view in being the first, perhaps, of his generation to realize 
the importance of securing the territory north of the Orange 
River and west of the two republics as a corridor for Great 
Britain into the interior of Africa. If Griqualand West 
were given over to the Free State and the rest of 
Waterboer's territory with the Batlapin and Barolong lands 
in Bechuanaland to the Transvaal, he saw that this " Suez 
Canal into the interior," as Rhodes described it later, might 
be closed for ever to English enterprise. 

To carry out his designs Southey got into communication 
with Waterboer, or rather with his agent, David Arnot. 
Both Waterboer, the head of the Griqua tribe, and the 
chieftains of the Barolongs and Batlapins, reahzing that 
they could not hope to carry on unaided intricate boundary 
disputes with the Boers, had appointed agents to conduct 
their case. Arnot and the successive agents for the Bat- 
lapins and Barolongs, Theodor Doms and the Rev. Joseph 
Ludorf , were troubled with few scruples and were suspected 
with some reason of turning to good account their authority 
to make grants of land for their principals. Arnot at any 
rate was also an extremely able man of business and proved 
more than a match for his Boer opponents. At Southey's 
instigation he persuaded the chieftain to ask that his 
territory should be incorporated in the British dominions, 
thus making the British Government responsible for his 
claims. Lord Kimberley's assent to the incorporation was 
obtained, subject to proof of Waterboer's case and on 
condition the Cape agreed to annex the territory. A 
magistrate from the Cape was sent to take over the 
administration of justice at the river diggings ; and the 
new High Commissioner, Sir Henry Barkly, at an interview 
with President Pretorius at Klipdrift, then re-named 
Barkly West, persuaded him to submit all the frontier 
disputes with Waterboer and the Bechuana chieftains to 



THE OPENING OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS 23 

arbitration. The Transvaal Government, unlike Arnot and 
Ludorf for the natives, presented its case very badly, and 
when Governor Keate of Natal, with whom the decision 
rested, made his award in October 1871, it entirely set 
aside the Transvaal claims. Thus the river diggings were 
adjudged to Waterboer, or in other words the British 
Government, and the Batlapin and Barolong pasture lands 
declared outside the Transvaal boundaries. Pretorius and 
his advisers had themselves largely to blame for this decision 
and were forced to resign office, but none the less the Keate 
award long rankled with the Transvaal Boers as a fresh 
grievance against the British, and more than ten years later 
Rhodes found them still attempting to evade it. 

Keate's decision against the Transvaal was well founded 
on the evidence available, but there is no such justification 
for Barkly's and Southey's high-handed proceedings in 
regard to the Free State claims to the rest of Waterboer's 
territory. Four days after the Keate award the High 
Commissioner proclaimed the whole of Griqualand West 
to be part of the British dominions, and sent up British 
magistrates and ofiicials to take over the administration of 
ttie dry diggings : this in spite of the fact that Lord 
Kimberley's condition of annexation to the Cape could not 
be fulfilled ; for the feehng against Southey and the 
Government among the Dutch colonists was so bitter 
that they did not venture even to introduce a bill for that 
purpose. There is no doubt that, had diamonds never 
been discovered, Waterboer would have been left to his 
fate with the Free State, and the policy of the British 
Government not to advance beyond the Orange River, 
laid down in 1854 ^^^ since reiterated, would have been 
observed. The only excuse for the British Government 
and Southey is that EngHsh authority was more Hkely 
to ensure respect among the 40,000-50,000 turbulent 
emigrants, chiefly of EngHsh race, in the new Crown colony 
than that of the petty repubhc. 

Brand was indeed given the offer of arbitration on his 
claims to Waterboer's territory, but not on terms that he 
could accept. Recognizing, however, that resistance was 
hopeless he withdrew his magistrates and calmed the 



24 CECIL RHODES 

hot-heads among his burghers who were eager for a fight. 
But he never ceased protesting and appealing to the British 
sense of justice, while Southey was employed in drawing 
up the best answer he could to his detailed statements of 
claim. Finally, in 1876, Lord Carnarvon, the Conservative 
Secretary of State, who for reasons of his own wished to 
allay ill-feeling in South Africa, tacitly admitted the wrong 
done by paying over £90,000 to the Free State as a solatium 
for the loss of Griqualand West. Southey had won in his 
duels with the Transvaal and the Free State ; for he had 
secured the Diamond Fields and taken the first step in the 
road to the north. But it was at a heavy cost. Not only 
were the two republics given a grievance, which the Trans- 
vaal at any rate never forgot, but the Dutch in Cape Colony 
were once more estranged from us and their English fellow- 
colonists and drawn closer to their brothers in the republics. 
Carnarvon within the next few years came up against this 
stubborn opposition in attempting to carry through his 
scheme for a confederation of South Africa ; and after him 
Rhodes found the same obstacle, rendered more formidable 
by fresh blunders of Downing Street, in his endeavours to 
proceed along Southey's line into the interior. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE YOUNG DIGGER 

In October 1871 Rhodes left his Natal farm, never to 
return. His luggage comprised a few digger's tools, some 
volumes of the classics and a Greek lexicon ; heaping these 
into a Scotch cart drawn by oxen he started on his 400- 
mile journey to the Diamond Fields. In those days this 
journey was at best a long and tiresome business ; J. W. 
Matthews, travelling about the same time as Rhodes, took 
seven days and nights in Walsh's post cart ; another 
prospector, who enjoyed the comparative ease and leisure 
of a conveyance drawn by six mules and two horses, took 
eleven days ; Rhodes in his ox-cart must have taken over 
a month. In that month he had plenty of time for 
solitary meditation, an occupation which never came amiss 
to him, while his oxen crawled through a country of 
singular beauty and grandeur. From Pietermaritzburg the 
road climbs steadily past the Mooi River to Blaauwkrantz 
and Colenso ; it crosses Natal's chief river, the Tugela, 
and thence steeply rises to Van Reenen's Pass over the 
Drakensberg range. From this point Rhodes could see 
the great Basuto mountains on his left and in front the 
broad plains of the Free State stretching into the distance. 
Across these he journeyed slowly through the Boer villages 
of Harrismith, Bethlehem, and Winburg to Bloemfontein, 
the capital, meeting few creatures by the way except the 
great herds of buck that still abounded in the country. 

Here he had his first experience of the high veld, the 
real South Africa. The part of Natal where he had hitherto 
Hved, with its deep valleys, its rushing rivers, its steamy 
heat and its luxuriant, semi-tropical vegetation, is charac- 

25 



26 CECIL RHODES 

teristic of a mere fringe of South Africa. It has a beauty 
and a charm of its own, but it is not a soul-expanding 
country. Perhaps for that reason the men of Natal with 
all their industry and perseverance, their courage and 
their local patriotism, have remained somewhat parochial 
and have never as a community had the same wide outlook 
on South African affairs as men from the other colonies. 
For the great unconfined spaces of the world one must 
go to Cape Colony, the Free State, the Transvaal or 
Bechuanaland and the country beyond. Here are the vast 
plains, unending to the view : 

Mile upon mile 
Of ridge and kopje, bush and candid waste 
Sun-dried and empty, tacit as the sea ; 

their level uniformity broken only by some clear-cut, flat- 
topped kopje rising plumb out of the veld, or by some 
tiny clump of green trees, the sign of water and of a Boer 
farmer's homestead. There is no monotony in this wide 
level expanse. The light of the sun by day is always 
changing, like the Hght upon the sea ; the whole country 
is bathed in a glory of light. At night the stars look down 
with eyes more shining than in our confined spaces ; or a 
sudden bush-fire sweeping over the distance with hghtning 
speed and strength Ughts up the darkness with its glowing 
radiance. And there is no such air as that of the veld, 
an exhilarating air, an uplifting air that gives a man hope 
and courage. In these vast plains of the veld that he saw 
for the first time on his journey to the diggings and on 
which he spent most of his remaining years, Rhodes must 
have gained that clear direct gaze characteristic of those 
who have dwelt long in those sun-washed spaces, a gaze 
that seemed to be straining out to a far distant horizon and 
never finding the goal of his visions. 

A day's farther ride from Bloemfontein brought Rhodes 
to Dutoitspan, which he thus describes in a letter written 
to his mother shortly after his arrival. " Fancy an immense 
plain with right in its centre a great mass of white tents 
and iron stores, and on one side of it, all mixed up with 
the camp, mounds of lime like ant-hills ; the country 



THE YOUNG DIGGER 27 

round is all flat with just thorn trees here and there : and 
you have some idea of Dutoitspan, the first spot where 
dry diggings for Diamonds was begun." Here were the 
principal hotels of the place, all in the Market Square : 
Benning and Martin's, which floated the Union Jack, 
Parker's opposite with the Stars and Stripes, and next door 
a hotel with the Prussian Eagle. Martin, the friendly host 
of the Union Jack hotel, generally managed to find a bed 
for the English new-comer, even if it were only a shake- 
down on the table, where a noisy party was playing loo till 
dawn. Staying here, no doubt, on the night of his arrival, 
Cecil went on next day to Colesberg Kopje or New Rush, 
where Herbert had already secured three claims " in the 
richest diamond mine the world ever produced. . . . 
Imagine," he continues to his mother, " a small round hill 
at its very highest part only 30 feet above the level of the 
surrounding country, about 180 yards broad and 220 long ; 
all round it a mass of white tents, and then beyond them 
a flat level country for miles and miles, with here and there 
a gentle rise. ... I should like you," he says, " to have a 
peep at the kopje from my tent door at the present moment. 
It is like an immense number of ant-heaps covered with 
black ants, as thick as can be, the latter represented by 
human beings ; when you understand there are about 
600 claims on the kopje and each claim is generally split 
into 4, and on each bit there are about 6 blacks and 
whites working, it gives a total of about ten thousand 
working every day on a piece of ground 180 yards by 220." 
He then describes how the kopje is divided off into claims. 
" Take your garden, for instance," he tells his mother, 
" and peg the whole off into squares or claims 31 ft. by 
31 ft., and then the question is how to take all the earth 
out and sort and sieve it. All through the kopje roads 
have been left to carry the stuff off in carts Hke the follow- 
ing [here comes a rough diagram] ; that is of every claim 
of 31 ft., 7 ft. 6 inches are not allowed to be worked, 
but is left for a road . . . the roads are the only ground 
that remain of the original level. . . . The carting on the 
kopje is done chiefly by mules, as they are so very hardy, 
and have so few diseases. There are constantly mules, 



28 CECIL RHODES 

carts and all going head over heels into the mines below 
as there are no rails or anything on either side of the roads, 
nothing but one great broad chasm below. Here and there 
where the roads have fallen in, bridges have been put, and 
they are now the safest part of the kopje. . . . On each 
side of every road there is now a continuous chasm from top 
to bottom of the kopje varying in depth from 30 to 60 ft.'* 

He then explains the rough system of digging and sifting 
then used on the Fields, and some of the difficulties to be 
overcome. " To begin with the ground is first picked, 
then the lumps mashed up and you put the stuff through 
a very coarse wire sieving, this lets the fine stuff pass 
through and keeps all the stones, which are thrown on one 
side ; it is then hoisted out of the claim, and either carried 
or carted to the sorting table, where it is first put through 
fine wire sieving, which sieves all the lime dust away ; 
what remains is put on the sorting table, and then one sorts 
away with a small scrapper, spreading the stuff out on the 
table with one scoop and then off with the next. The 
diamonds are found in all ways ; the big ones generally 
in the hole by the caffre, or else in the sieving ; and the 
small ones on the table. . . . They are only found on these 
kopjes, and along the river, where they very hkely have 
been carried by water. There are reefs all round these 
diamond mines, inside which the diamonds are found. 
The reef is the usual soil of the country round, red sand 
just at the top and then a black and white stony shale 
below. Inside the reef is the diamondiferous soil. It works 
just Hke Stilton cheese, and is as like the composition of 
Stilton cheese as anything I can compare it to. . . . They 
have been able to find no bottom yet, and keep on finding 
steadily at 70 ft. You will understand how enormously 
rich it is, when I say that a good claim would certainly 
average a diamond to every load of stuff that was sorted — 
a load being about 50 buckets. . . . The question now of 
course is, how are the roads to be worked ? Every claim- 
holder has an interest in them, as a portion of every man's 
claim is the road, and one has no idea of leaving ground, 
every load of which stands a fair chance of holding a 
diamond. . . . Some day I expect to see the kopje one 



THE YOUNG DIGGER 29 

big basin where once there was a large hill." In this 
prediction Rhodes showed himself a true prophet ; for in 
the place of Colesberg Kopje now stands a huge crater, 
from the edge of which men working at the bottom look no 
bigger than ants. 

He concludes the letter with a business-Uke statement of 
his own and his brother's prospects. " Have you ever 
read those tales/' he asks his mother, " where they find some 
wonderfully big diamonds ? Well ! on this kopje I should 
think nearly every day they find a diamond over 50 carats. 
The only misfortune is, that they almost all have a slightly 
yellow tinge, and are getting quite unsaleable. Diamond 
buyers now give only £^ per carat for yellow stones of any 
size or shape, that is a 70 carat would not fetch more than 
£280 I found a 17I carat on Saturday, it was very sHghtly 
off, and I hope to get £100 for it ; does it not seem an absurd 
price ? Yesterday I found a 3^^ perfect stone, but glassy, 
which I sold for ^^30 as they are rather dangerous stones 
to keep, having a nasty habit of suddenly spUtting all over. 
. . . You must not however think that every diamond 
one finds is a beauty, the great proportion are nothing but 
splints — but still even of these you very seldom find one 
that is not worth 5s. Rough diamonds are of all shapes, 
sizes and colour under the sun, some are fiat, some round, 
some like two pyramids with their bases joined, some have 
black spots in the centre, others are yellow, and in fact they 
take every form you can think of . ... I find on an average 
30 carats a week and am working one of the few whole 
claims in the kopje : a claim in fact that will take me 4 
years to work out at the present rate. Diamonds have 
only to continue a fair price and I think Herbert's fortune 
is made. When I tell you at the present moment he owns 
in all 3 whole claims on this kopje : the one I am working, 
I whole claim, Beecher's i quarter, Chadwick a half, another 
whole claim at the top of the kopje and another \ I bought. 
Mine and Beecher's however yield far the most. I average 
about £100 per week. — Yrs., C. Rhodes." 

Rhodes was once more left to his own resources when he 
wrote this letter home, for soon after he arrived at the Fields 
Herbert had gone back to Natal to see to the last cotton 



30 CECIL RHODES 

crop, leaving his brother to look after the claims by himself. 
Within the last year and a half he had had pretty severe 
training in self-reliance. At seventeen he arrives in Natal 
friendless and alone, at eighteen he takes sole charge of 
a farm of 250 acres and a gang of native labourers, and 
now at eighteen and a half he has claims valued at £5000 
to look after, more raw natives to keep in order and to 
hold his own in a rough undiscipHned crowd, consisting, as 
Froude saw it two years later, of " diggers from America 
and Australia, German speculators, Fenian head-centres, 
traders, saloon keepers, professional gamblers, barristers, 
ex-officers of the Army and Navy, younger sons of good 
family who have not taken to a profession or have been 
obliged to leave ; a marvellous motley assemblage, among 
whom money flows like water from the amazing productive- 
ness of the mine ; and in the midst of them a hundred or 
so keen-eyed Jewish merchants, who have gathered like 
eagles over their prey, and a few thousand natives who have 
come to work for wages, to steal diamonds and to lay their 
earnings out in rifles and powder/' In such a crowd a 
man had to depend on his own resources if he was to keep 
his head above water. And he shows signs of the severe 
training. This letter, abrupt and to the point without a 
word in it of family gossip or home allusions, is a precocious 
production for such a youth, and, when Frank, following 
Cecil's advice, comes out a few months later, " Nobody," 
he says, *' believes I am older than Cecil " ; in fact, one 
who knew the brothers well out there speaks categorically 
of Cecil as the elder. Within a few months of his arrival 
Mr. Merriman, another of his Kimberley friends, speaking 
to Frank, " praises Cecil up to the skies. He says he is 
such an excellent man of business " ; Frank continues in 
his letter home, " that he has managed all the business in 
Herbert's absence wonderfully well and that they were all 
so very fond of him. . . . He says most young fellows when 
they get up there and do well get so very bumptious, but 
that Cecil was just the contrary. Cecil seems to have done 
wonderfully well as regards the diamonds. ... I have not 
repeated half the nice things he said about Cecil." 

Frank went from Cape Town to join Herbert at the 



THE YOUNG DIGiJER 31 

Natal cotton plantation, and then both came over to join 
Cecil at Kimberley. " We found Cecil," writes Frank, 
" down in the claim, measuring his ground with his lawyer 
and in a tremendous rage with another man in the next 
claim to him, who has encroached on his ground. ... I know 
the Father will be horrified at the idea of Cecil going to law." 
Here the three brothers, with a hideous tailless cur picked 
up by Cecil, lived in a tent, 16 by 18 feet, stretched over a 
rough skeleton framework and shared a mess with four or 
five other young fellows. Housekeeping must have taxed 
Cecil's powers of organization to the full, for most necessaries 
and all luxuries were hard to come by. Beef and mutton 
at 6d. a lb. and meal at 7s. to los. a bushel, the produce of 
the few Boer farmers of the district, were cheap enough : 
but water cost 3d. a bucket, firewood, brought from long 
distances, £3 to £4 a load, and vegetables were almost as 
valuable as small diamonds. Everything else had to be 
brought up 400 miles from Port Ehzabeth or 700 from Cape 
Town by ox-transport, so that the prices for building 
material, mining gear, clothes, blankets, groceries, Uquor 
and any kind of luxury were correspondingly enormous. 
But the men who had come for a Ufe of adventure and free- 
dom to the diggings cared Uttle about discomfort, Cecil 
least of all. From the motley crowd gathered from the 
ends of the earth the brothers picked out for their mess 
and their special friends some of the best of the young 
men. Among these were C. D. Rudd of Harrow and 
Trinity, Cambridge, George Paton, Becher, and Dr. Thome, 
who all made their mark in business ; Seppings Wright, 
the Graphic artist, was one of them ; Scully, then a lad of 
sixteen and later notable for his gift of interpreting the 
fascination of South African life and scenery, another ; 
Norman Garstin, who soon abandoned the Fields for the 
studios of Paris and finally settled down as an artist at 
Newlyn, always retained a Uvely memory of his early 
friendship here with Rhodes. Above all, there was John 
X. Merriman, son of the Dean of Grahamstown, keen and 
hot-headed like his father, who was a very firebrand in 
ecclesiastical circles. We have seen what he thought of 
Cecil Rhodes, who in his turn wrote home of Merriman 



32 CECIL RHODES 

as " a pleasant young fellow." These two used to go out 
riding together, Rhodes on his rusty black pony. Bander- 
snatch, discussing the affairs of the Fields and of South 
Africa, the classics and universal history. Mr. Merriman 
still recalls his companion's remarkable interest in politics 
and the compact they both made to take a part in pubHc 
affairs, the only intellectual pursuit, so they agreed, open 
to a colonist. Rhodes on his side must have gained greatly 
in general knowledge and in breadth of outlook from his 
association with the best read man and the best talker in 
South Africa. 

For the time being, however, Rhodes, busied with his 
claims, took no very active part in the politics of Griqualand 
West, as the new Crown Colony was called. Sir Robert 
Southey had, appropriately enough, been sent up as the 
first Lieutenant-Governor, with J. B. Currey as Government 
Secretary. PoUtics there were apt to be volcanic in those 
early days, for the turbulent diggers had many real or 
fancied grievances, which they were inchned to redress 
by rioting and rough attempts at mob justice ; ^ and at 
one time the mihtary had to be called in to quell them. 
Southey's ideas of northern expansion, however, must have 
found a ready sympathiser in the young digger, who also 
formed a lasting friendship with Currey and his family. 
It is even recorded that Rhodes and Merriman between 
them concocted for Southey's benefit a draft of the anti- 
gambling law, which was enacted in 1873 ; but that is his 
only excursus into pohtics before 1880. 

His strenuous Ufe as a digger did not prevent his having 
his jokes at times. Scully describes a party of Rhodes and 
four others returning late one night from a mild spree at 
Dutoitspan and sending him as the smallest of the party 
on to the roof of the Uttle tin church to ring the bell, much 
to the alarm of the diggers, who all came rushing out of 
their tents to see what was up. There is also a pleasant 

1 Diamond thieves and illicit diamond buyers (I.D.B.) were the 
chief causes of grievance. But the mob sometimes showed some sense 
of fairness. The house of a butcher suspected of diamond thefts was 
burned to the ground, but when the mob discovered that he was innocent 
the hat was sent round and ample means collected to restore the butcher's 
property. 



THE YOUNG DIGGER 33 

picture by Scully of himself and Rhodes sitting down on 
the ground with a meal-bag as card-table between them to 
decide in three rounds of euchre whether Rhodes should 
pay £25 or £30 for Scully's wagon, brought back in parlous 
condition after the eight months' trek to the Transvaal. 
The luck was against Rhodes, who paid up cheerfully. 
He even danced on occasion, though he generally was 
content to choose the ugUest partners in the room, asserting 
that he enjoyed it chiefly for the exercise : his more 
susceptible brother Frank found it " quite a mistake to 
suppose that there are no nice girls out here." But Cecil 
had no more eye for a pretty face at Kimberley than he had 
in Lincolnshire : " I do not believe," says one contemporary, 
" if a flock of the most adorable women passed through the 
street, he would go across the road to see them." But what 
struck all his contemporaries at this time was his faculty of 
silent concentration on his own thoughts. There is a vision 
of him " silent and self-contained, dressed in white flannels 
and leaning moodily with hands in his pockets against a 
street wall. He hardly ever had a companion and seem- 
ingly took no interest but in his own thoughts." On the 
sorting ground he is described as a tall, fair boy with a 
ruddy complexion and aquiUne features, " wearing flannels 
of the school playing field, somewhat shrunken with 
strenuous rather than effectual washings that still left the 
colour of red dust ... his tall figure crumpled up on an 
inverted bucket, as he sat scraping his gravel surrounded 
by his dusky Zulus," 1 . . " moody and deaf to the chatter 
around him, his blue eyes fixed intently on his work or on 
some fabric of his brain " ; and one of his mess-mates 
used to chaff him on his absent-mindedness after dinner, 
when he would lean forward on both elbows, his mouth 
slightly open, rubbing his chin with his forefinger — yet not 
so entirely abstracted but that he would suddenly wake up 
and join in the talk. For with all his absent-mindedness he 
had a shrewd idea of what was going on about him. The 
letter to his mother already quoted shows a precocious 
power of observation and that uncanny capacity for business 
which stands out so clearly as the main element of his 
success in after life. Nobody who presumed on his casual 

D 



34 CECIL RHODES 

manner remained in error long, or failed to discover in this 
dreamer a practical acumen most dangerous to anybody 
who tried to get the advantage of him. As Lord Rosebery 
said of him, he was that most formidable of all men of 
action, the practical visionary. 



CHAPTER V 

OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 

A SERIOUS illness, when he was alone in Kimberley, had 
warned Rhodes that he must not presume on his delicate 
constitution. He had found kind friends in the Curreys to 
nurse him back to health ; but he was still weak when the 
brothers arrived. To complete his recovery he went off 
with Herbert some time in 1872 for a long trek into the 
Transvaal, Frank being left to look after the claims. 
Herbert, an unquiet, roving spirit, had heard of gold 
discoveries in the Transvaal and wanted to investigate 
the new diggings. Borrowing young Scully's wagon, the 
two brothers travelled along the missionaries' road into 
Bechuanaland as far as Mafeking, then turning eastwards 
into the South African RepubUc past Pretoria to Mara- 
bastad in the Low Country and eastwards to the Murchison 
Range, both districts where gold had been found. Thence 
by slow stages they turned back, striking the high veld 
again at Middleburg, and reached Kimberley after several 
months' absence. During that long trek the great love he 
bore to the country, the people and even the animals of 
South Africa became rooted in his being. It is a love 
that breathes in every speech of his and often gives him 
quaint and apposite illustrations of his meaning. Talking, 
for example, many years later, of his own isolation, he 
found an analogy to his case in the life he had observed 
on the veld. " It has been my lot in life," he said, " to 
travel through many regions of this country, and it has 
been my fortune to see a soHtary springbok separated from 
the herd. I have often pitied his feelings and wondered 
how he works out the day ; but I have a sort of idea that 

35 



36 CECIL RHODES 

the time comes when he returns to his old associates, and 
perhaps the temporary dissociation will have strengthened 
the original ties/' He bought a farm of 3000 acres, when 
he was up in the Transvaal, but it proved, so he told his 
friend Dr. Sutherland, a mere sink for money and of no 
earthly good ; however, his experience gave him the right 
to boast to the South Africa Committee of 1897 that he had 
known the Transvaal for twenty-five years, and he never 
forgot the hospitality and other sterling qualities that he 
found among his Boer fellow-beings. 

What he saw of the country he passed through and of 
its problems and his long meditations during this almost 
solitary trek made a lasting impression on him and turned 
his thoughts definitely to schemes of greater moment than 
diamond digging. For the immediate present the trek 
seems to have confirmed him in his cherished design of 
going to Oxford, " to help himself in his career," a career 
which he always intended to be something more than that 
of amassing money. Not that he objected to money : on 
that he was quite frank. He desired it partly to pay for 
Oxford and for other ambitions, but also because he liked 
and was amused by the game of winning it. But before 
leaving Kimberley he had to settle his affairs. Herbert, 
tired of diamond mining, sold his claims in De Beers New 
Rush and disappeared into the wilds and out of Cecil's 
Mfe.^ Rhodes then went into partnership with C. D. Rudd, 
who was to stay out to look after their properties : at this 
time, probably, he deserted the New Rush and began to 
buy up claims in Old De Beers, which he used to speak of 
as " a nice Uttle mine," and which soon became the main- 
stay of his fortunes. 

1 In 1875 Herbert is heard of as a gold miner at Pilgrim's Rest in the 
Transvaal and he became a representative for that place in the Volksraad. 
He is heard of in prison at Louren^o Marques for an unsuccessful attempt 
at smuggling through Portuguese territory an old cannon destined for 
Sekukuni, a rebel chief in the Transvaal, and lastly in Nyassaland, where 
he was burnt to death in his hut in 1879. Cecil took great pains to have 
a gravestone erected to his memory and carefully preserved ; and among 
his papers are several photographs of it sent to him a year before his 
own death. 



OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 37 



Cecil and Frank returned to England together in 1873, 
Frank to take up his commission in the cavalry and Cecil 
to matriculate at Oxford in the Michaelmas term. He tried 
to get into University College, where his old friend Robert 
Yerburgh was ; but that foundation, having already sent 
down Shelley for distributing revolutionary pamphlets, 
now with better excuse refused to take this other more 
Philistine dreamer, because he failed to quaUfy in Latin 
prose. So Rhodes went to Oriel as a passman. He never 
had rooms in college but Hved in lodgings with Yerburgh 
and other friends, mostly Christchurch or University 
undergraduates, in King Edward Street or The High. In 
fact he seems to have gone very little into Oriel ; and it is 
known what he thought of the quality of its dinners. 

Certainly few undergraduates had so chequered and 
broken a sojourn at Oxford as Cecil Rhodes, and no man 
with less determination would, in face of all his difhculties, 
have carried out his purpose of obtaining his degree. Almost 
at the outset not only his Oxford career but even his life 
seemed in jeopardy. He had not yet thrown off his youthful 
deHcacy and found the dampness of Oxford very trying to 
his lungs : in his second term he caught a chill rowing, 
which so' affected his constitution that his doctor gave him 
only six months to live, even if he went back at once to the 
clear invigorating air of South Africa.^ Two years, however, 
of the cUmate of Kimberley, more treks and the care of his 
friends the Curreys set him up again and he was back at 
Oxford for the Easter term of 1876. For the next two 
years he kept every term and found time for a visit to 
Kimberley during a long vacation, but he did not keep his 
last term or take his degree till 188 1, when he was twenty- 
eight, had earned a large fortune for himself and was a rising 
member of the Cape Parliament. 

Although he had become a rich man when he took his 
degree, as a freshman and even later he was sometimes 
embarrassed for money. Writing to Rudd in his first term 

^ Rhodes himself at a later date saw the entry " only six months to 
live " in the doctor's case-book. 



38 CECIL RHODES 

he says : "I wake up fancying myself meeting various 
little bits of paper ranging over four or five months with 
my blessed signature at the bottom/' and he admits having 
been obUged to borrow money on credit from Rudd's 
brother : "It is very unpleasant being under an obHgation 
to any one . . . but I had not a sixpence and do not Uke 
to bother my father. People in England are so blastedly 
suspicious : they also charge 4 % for drafts." Two years 
later a payment of £50 leaves him so straitened that 
he determines to economize by reading at home in the 
Long Vacation. But such money difficulties were purely 
temporary ; the claims of his Kimberley business were a 
more permanent and distracting call on his attention at 
Oxford. For, besides the flying visit to Kimberley on 
business during one long vacation, even in term time this 
singular imdergraduate rarely loses sight of his growing 
interests in South Africa. In his letters to his partner 
Rudd he discusses the pros and cons of buying new claims, 
and is very strong against abandoning old ones because of 
bad times, for a rally is bound to come ; he describes his 
interviews with the secretaries of rival companies or his 
visits to the diamond merchants of Hatton Garden, and 
sends his views on the state of foreign poHtics and their 
influence on the diamond market. He discusses ice 
machines and pumping engines, required for contracts 
undertaken by the partners, and asks Rudd to note his 
precise instructions to the makers about special winding 
drums and clutch gears to suit the conditions at Kimberley. 
He is also lavish in his instructions to his partner to 
" accumulate the ready " even more industriously than 
pumping engines. One letter, for instance, has an interest- 
ing apologia for his decision to eat dinners at the Temple 
while he is completing his terms at Oxford : '' on a calm 
review of the preceding year," he writes, " I find that £3000 
had been lost, because, owing to my having no profession, 
I lacked pluck on three occasions, through fearing that one 
might lose ; and I had nothing to fall back on in the shape 
of a profession. ... I am slightly too cautious now " : 
besides the profession for himself, as a second string to their 
bow, he proposes a " nest-egg " in the form of a " marvel- 



OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 39 

lously solvent property '* at Hampstead, which he has 
bought for £6200 and in which he offers to go halves with 
Rudd ; ''it is prettily situated and from all accounts is 
Hkely to increase in value . . . owing to a railway about three 
minutes which discharges in the centre of the city." With 
this nest-egg in reserve they would feel much safer as all 
Diamond Field securities are necessarily very risky. ^ " By 
all means," he concludes, " try and spare me for two years : 
you will find I shall be twice as good a speculator with a 
profession at my back. I will be reading hard all the 
summer." 

In spite of this distracting background of business and 
speculation Rhodes took his life at the university more 
seriously than most passmen. It is true he read in his 
own way and rarely attended lectures : '* Now, Mr. Butler," 
he said to his Dean, " you let me alone and I shall pull 
through somehow " ; and he was quite right, for though 
his reading was spasmodic he took real interest in books 
he thought useful and made them part of his own life. 
He had his own ideas, too, of college discipHne. " My 
dons and I have had some tremendous skirmishes," he wrote 
to Rudd, " I was nearly caught going to Epsom, but still 
do not think I shall be sent down. The change [from Kim- 
berley] was at first rather odd." He also belonged to clubs 
more celebrated for good fellowship than for study, such as 
the Bullingdon, Vincent's and the Freemasons. At the 
banquet following his initiation as a Mason he created some 
scandal by his levity in reveahng the secrets of the craft in 
spite of the president's reproofs and attempts by his friends 
to pull him down by the coat tails. For a time, too, he 
was master of the drag. His friends were most of them 
quiet men who kept to themselves, and many of whom 
afterwards took a more or less prominent part in politics 
or business. Robert Yerburgh was one of the leaders of 
the set, others were Dunbar Barton, afterwards a judge in 
Ireland ; Maguire, who became a Fellow of All Souls and is 
now a director of the Chartered Company, and Sir Charles 

* Rudd does not seem to have availed himself of Rhodes's offer, and 
Rhodes was obliged to realize and be content with ;^8oo profit on his 
Hampstead speculation. 



40 CECIL RHODES 

Metcalfe. Among less intimate acquaintances were Bodley, 
the historian of modern France, the present Lords 
Desborough and Downham, Arnold Forster, Tennyson 
d'Eyncourt, and G. W. E. Russell. Rhodes is noted in 
this set as one who was always talking, and some rather 
objected to the low views of human nature he at times 
expressed, derived no doubt from Kimberley acquaintances. 
He had rather a naive habit, too, of bringing up some well- 
known phrase he had just read in Plato or Aristotle and 
insisting that all present should discuss it from his own 
and every other point of view. This habit of starting a 
debate, even with the most unsympathetic audience, on 
a subject or phrase, which happened to seize his attention 
for the moment, persisted throughout his life : it often 
wearied those who could not see his drift, but he found it 
most useful in clearing his own mind and making certain 
that he had grasped an idea in all its bearings before he 
acted upon it. He was indeed somewhat apart even from 
men in his own set. He was older than most of them, 
had not been to one of the regular public schools as they 
generally had, possessed far more acquaintance with Ufe 
than any of them ; and had queer unconventional ways. He 
would suddenly bring out a pocketful of diamonds to induce 
a man to join him in Kimberley, and he had a disconcerting 
way of impressing his creed of hard work on people. 
" Shouldn't do that," he said to a friend who expressed a 
desire to make his hving by writing, "it is not a man's 
work — mere loafing. Every man should have active work 
in life.'* 

But though he was so different from most of his under- 
graduate contemporaries, the Oxford spirit, so hard to 
define and yet so easy to recognize, sank into his nature. 
Aristotle's Ethics, the groundwork and the special glory 
of the Oxford system, with its virile appeal to young men 
to exercise their best faculties to the full, in order to attain 
a life of happiness and virtue, became to him a lasting 
source of inspiration : Gibbon, too, most characteristic, if 
most ungrateful, of Oxford's sons, gave him a basis for his 
political creed, that Rome's burden of governing the world 
had now fallen on England's shoulders. There, too, during 



OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 41 

Rhodes's years at Oxford, was John Ruskin, preaching a 
new gospel of beauty and of pubHc service to an age wearied 
of ugUness and commercial self-interest ; the whole uni- 
versity thronged to his lectures ; at his bidding dons and 
undergraduates went out daily to Hinksey and took off 
their coats to labour at Ruskin's road and learn the meaning 
of hard, unselfish toil ; in language rarely surpassed for 
eloquence and burning conviction he was setting before 
them their duty as citizens of no mean city. " There is 
a destiny now possible to us," so spake the prophet in words 
yet ringing in the ears of young Oxford, when Rhodes 
came up, " the highest ever set before a nation to be 
accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race ; 
a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not 
yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to 
govern and the grace to obey. . . . Will you youths of 
England make your country again a royal throne of kings ; 
a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre 
of peace ; mistress of learning and of the Arts, faithful 
guardian of time-tried principles, under temptation from 
fond experiments and hcentious desires ; and amidst the 
cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped 
in her strange valour, of goodwill towards men ? . . . This 
is what England must either do, or perish : she must found 
colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most 
energetic and worthiest men ; seizing every piece of fruitful 
waste ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching 
these her colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity 
to their country, and that their first aim is to be to advance 
the power of England by land and sea : and that, though 
they live on a distant plot of ground, they are no more 
to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from their 
native land than the sailors of her fleets do, because they 
float on distant seas. ... If we can get men, for little 
pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths for love 
of England, we may find men also who will plough and 
sow for her, who will behave kindly and righteously for 
her, and who will bring up their children to love her, and 
who will gladden themselves in the brightness of her glory, 
more than in all the light of tropical skies. . . . You think 



-^ 



42 CECIL RHODES 

that an impossible ideal. Be it so ; refuse to accept it, 
if you will ; but see that you form your own in its stead. 
All that I ask of you is to have a fixed purpose of some 
kind for your country and for yourselves, no matter how 
restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish." 

It is for words such as these that Rhodes ever after- 
wards held the Inaugural Lecture as one of his greatest 
possessions. Among his papers there is a rough jotting 
in his handwriting : " You have many instincts, rehgion, 
love, money-making, ambition, art and creation, which 
from a human point of view I think the best, but if you 
differ from me, think it over and work with all your soul 
for that instinct you deem the best. C. J. Rhodes " — a 
jotting clearly suggested by these words of Ruskin. They 
were words that gave form and direction to the vague 
and troubled thoughts which, in the wide expanses of 
South Africa, had already been simmering in his brain. 

But to Rhodes, as to most university men, teachers 
however inspired and lectures however sublime were not 
the most valuable part of Oxford life. The freedom and 
unconventionality of the undergraduate, untrammelled as 
he is by pompous precedents, yet insensibly moulded by 
a tradition of fastidious scholarship and exact research of 
truth, the interminable discussions wherein generation after 
generation of Oxford men renew the investigation of common 
beliefs in politics, religion and morals, and constantly bring 
currents of fresh air into the nation's creeds — all this 
delighted and impressed him. At Oxford he lost something 
of the hardness and cynicism which some of his friends 
there had deplored ; and he never lost his sense of what he 
owed to those years. On his return to South Africa he 
showed a touching belief in the power of Oxford to give 
others what he owed her himself. " Bishop," he once 
said to his friend Dr. Alexander, " have you ever thought 
how it is that Oxford men figure so largely in all depart- 
ments of pubhc life ? The Oxford system in its most 
finished form looks very unpractical, yet, wherever you 
turn your eye — except in science — an Oxford man is at 
the top of the tree." So, whenever he wanted a young 
man to carry on his work, he was always on the look 



OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 43 

out for one from his old university ; he always gave a 
specially warm welcome to young Oxford men on a visit 
to South Africa ; and it is related that in the last year of 
his life, when he was sad, suffering and desolate, his whole 
face hghted up when a chance visitor began quoting to 
him the first lines of Matthew Arnold's tribute to the 
" Beautiful city, so venerable, so lovely, . . /' " Go on," 
he said, " quote the whole passage," and as he Hstened 
he seemed to forget his pain. Finally, he could think of 
no better gift to the Empire he loved than to bring its 
young men to Oxford to draw from her the inspiration 
which had helped him so powerfully in his own career. 

II 

The ship carrying Rhodes home to England in 1873 
crossed in mid-Atlantic an outgoing ship that had among 
its steerage passengers one Barnett Isaacs, the grandson of 
a rabbi and son of a little shopkeeper in Whitechapel. 
He was eighteen years old, and his sole capital consisted of 
sixty boxes of cigars, the result of many years' savings, 
but he had been so attracted by glowing reports from his 
brother Harry of the opportunities for profitable specula- 
tion to be found on the Fields that he had determined 
to try his luck there. Making his way up to Kimberley, 
he sold his cigars at an enormous profit and then turned 
his talents to the business known as that of a kopje- 
walloper. This was to go round the sorting-tables and 
buy up the diamonds as they were turned out of the gravel 
for prices which would ensure a large profit on their resale. 
He changed his name to the more arresting nom de guerre 
of Barney Barnato, hired a shanty as an office for a guinea 
a day — " worth it," he explained, '* if you can make 30s. 
a day" — and as stock-in-trade bought up an old lame 
yellow pony from a retiring kopje- walloper ; for he had 
observed this pony stopping of its own accord at the best 
sorting-tables and dealers' shanties and calculated that 
he would thereby obtain his business connection. Barney 
Barnato prospered in all his dealings, and in 1876, the year 
Rhodes returned to Oxford, found his capital increased to 



44 CECIL RHODES 

£3000, which he expended on the purchase of the four best 
sections in the Kimberley mine. This shrewd purchase 
enabled him gradually to buy up more claims and sections 
in this mine, which Rhodes had now deserted for his " nice 
little mine," Old De Beers, and seven years after his steerage 
passage to South Africa with his five dozen boxes of cigars 
he was rich enough to found the firm of Barnato Brothers, 
dealers in diamonds and brokers in mining property. 
Rhodes had also been buying up claims in other mines, 
and in the course of the eighties the two men were brought 
face to face in a rivalry for supremacy on the Diamond 
Fields. Leave we now Barnato and return to Rhodes, still, 
even as an Oxford undergraduate, the Kimberley digger. 

After the first feverish excitement on the discovery of 
the dry diggings, the diamond industry had passed through 
a period of serious depression. The causes for this depres- 
sion were various. The diamond-bearing " yellow ground," 
though found to a depth of fifty or sixty feet, was worked 
with such energy that it soon showed signs of giving out. 
Below it, but still enclosed in the oval-shaped funnel of 
shale, known as " the reef," was a layer of bluish breccia 
composite, called the " blue ground," which extended to an 
unknown depth. The quahties of this blue ground were 
not much known, but most diggers thought that with the 
exhaustion of the yellow ground diamonds would cease to 
be found. Continual disputes with farm owners about 
licence fees also hampered the industry and were not abated 
until in 1875 the Crown bought up the farm Voruitzicht, 
containing both De Beers and the Kimberley mine, through 
the agency of Mr. Merriman. The roads between each 
claim were another source of trouble and dispute between 
the adjoining owners ; and, as they were undermined and 
fell in, the difficulty of working by a separate system of 
haulage for each claim created terrible confusion, each mine 
assuming the appearance of some vast spider's web of 
chains and ropes, along which buckets were constantly 
passing from the rim to the interior. Then the encircling 
reef began to cause serious difficulty, for, as the yellow 
ground supporting it was scooped out, it fell in, burying 
large tracts of diamond-bearing soil. Water also oozed 



OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 45 

through and flooded the mines. Lastly, with the trade 
depression of 1875 and the succeeding years the market 
for diamonds became poor and the prices to be obtained 
were barely remunerative. In consequence of all these 
difficulties many diggers gave up the business in despair 
and sold their claims for anything they would fetch. 

Rhodes, however, was one of those who never despaired, 
because he was long-sighted enough to see remedies for all 
these difficulties. Both he and Barnato were convinced 
that the prosperity of the Fields would not cease with the 
exhaustion of the " yellow ground " ; without any scientific 
knowledge to guide them, they believed that the blue 
ground also contained diamonds, and they were confirmed 
in their instinct by the Cape mineralogist. With regard 
to the other difficulties, fall of reef, flooding and the 
haulage of ground from the mines he had one panacea, 
economy of working by an amalgamation of interests. 
Froude, when he visited Kimberley in 1874, had seen the 
need of this amalgamation of interests to secure the use 
of the best and cheapest mechanical devices and to regulate 
the output of diamonds, and Barnato saw it as clearly as 
Rhodes. It could be effected in two ways : by a combina- 
tion of claim-holders in a mine to work for objects of common 
interest, such as pumping out the water or removing blocks 
of reef ; or by an absorption of all claims in a mine or even 
of the variovLs mines into as few hands as possible. 

Rhodes took his sh^ae in promoting both methods of 
united action. When the Mining Boards were established, 
with his partners Rudd and Alderson he tendered in 1874 
for the contract to pump out the Kimberley, De Beers and 
Dutoitspan mines. By cutting the price very fine they 
got the contract over the head of some formidable rivals, 
and then nearly lost it for want of the pumping machinery. 
However, by dint of shameless importunity and by pajdng 
the exorbitant price of £1000 Rhodes obtained his engine 
from an unwilling sejler at Victoria West ; he had to pay 
another £120 to get it transported to Kimberley, and, as 
he had no more ready money, to persuade the Boer trans- 
port rider, who had never seen him before, to accept his 
cheque. He never forgot this old Boer's readiness to trust 



46 CECIL RHODES 

him and used to date his increased respect for the Boer 
race from this circumstance. The pumping contract did 
not prove all gain : engine and gear were often out of order, 
and once, when Rhodes was in charge, the boiler burst 
because he had forgotten to fill it ; penalties incurred and 
incidental expenses also proved costly. But it was useful 
for the prominence it gave Rhodes on the Fields and was 
held by the partners for many years. While at Oxford 
Rhodes used to buy engines for the pumping at £115 to 
£140, a considerable reduction on the £1000 engine with 
which it started ; and finally assigned the contract as a 
stock-in-trade to the first company he and Rudd started. 

But Rhodes's warning to Rudd to accumulate " the 
ready " even more than pumping engines was dictated by 
his policy of purchasing all the claims he could lay hand on 
and thus doing away with the need of cumbersome mining 
boards. He and Rudd stuck to their Old De Beers mine 
and rapidly extended their holding in it, either by buying 
claims outright or by bringing other claim-holders into 
partnership with them. They acquired the valuable block 
known as Baxter's Gully and might once have bought the 
whole mine for a mere song, some £6000 ; but after discuss- 
ing the offer for a whole day they reluctantly decided 
that they could not afford the capital as well as the licence 
fees, no doubt one of the occasions missed by Rhodes for 
" want of pluck." But he could not often blame himself 
on this score ; his more usual tendency was to an invincible 
optimism. " I suppose our affair at De Beers looks bad 
now," he writes from his father's vicarage in 1876 ^ ; " don't 
be low-spirited. If ever you were in a good thing that will 
give you a good income, that will. ... I suppose you, like 
the rest, are in a happy state of bills, short cash, and 
prospective insolvency. All I can say is I envy you. I 
never was so happy as when in bills up to my neck and 
pump breaking down." And though he did not buy up 
the mine for £6000 he was gradually working to that end 
by more expensive methods. By 1880 R. Graham, 
Dunsmure, Alderson, Stow and EngUsh and other less 

1 Not 1879 as the Diamond Fields Advertiser, where the letter was 
published at Christmas 1906, surmises. , 



i 



OXFORD AND KIMBERLEY 47 

known De Beers claim-holders had joined the Rhodes- Rudd 
partnership, which on April i was floated as a company 
with the modest capital of £200,000. Some important 
groups were still outstanding at De Beers, but Rhodes's 
company already held the chief place. Meanwhile Bamato, 
who also formed his company in that year, was in much the 
same position at the Kimberley mine. For some years longer 
these two long-headed young men were content to work on 
parallel lines without meeting as rivals. But this was after 
Rhodes had taken his degree at Oxford, where, it must be 
remembered, he was still an undergraduate in residence 
during a considerable portion of the time he was thus carry- 
ing on his business as a pumping contractor and consoUdating 
his interests in De Beers. 



CHAPTER VI 



DREAMS 



Rhodes had many sides to his character and a rare faculty 
for keeping all his interests distinct and becoming absorbed 
in the business of the moment. Within the five years from 
1876 to 1881 he was by turns the Oxford passman interested 
in his Aristotle and in the talk and pastimes of the average 
undergraduate, the diamond digger immersed in the work 
of acquiring wealth, the South African pohtician, and, 
lastly, the dreamer of dreams. To most of his friends 
and contemporaries he showed only one side of his activities, 
and to each of them in turn that seemed the one purpose 
of his life : hence a strange diversity in his friendships. 
He had Oxford friends, friends coarsened by the rough 
and boisterous Ufe of Kimberley, political friends, and a 
very few to whom he imparted his dreams and his most 
secret ambitions. Naturally such diverse friends did not 
always harmonize with one another : the budding states- 
man or the man of university education could not be 
expected to appreciate the merits Rhodes found in some of 
his Jewish financiers and unscrupulous adventurers of the 
diggings. But Rhodes did not care : once, a Harrow and 
Cambridge friend relates, he met him coming out of the 
train with one of his more disreputable acquaintances ; 
while greeting Rhodes he studiously ignored his companion. 
" You know So-and-so," said Rhodes, but as the coolness 
was still obvious, " Oh, yes," he continued in the other 
man's hearing, *' I remember, you think him a thorough- 
paced scoundrel," chuckling as, with a familiar gesture, 
he rubbed his two hands along his left side. Rhodes 
himself had the co-ordinating principle which harmonized 

48 



DREAMS 49 

and united all these interests, though as a natural con- 
sequence of his habit of concentration on the work of the 
moment, the interests of the diamond digger or the Cape 
politician sometimes seemed to loom too largely in the 
eyes of the world, and even in his own, and to give a dis- 
proportionate bias to the sum total of his activities. But 
to a few intimates he gave gUmpses of his central ideas. 

One of the few to whom Rhodes spoke without reserve 
of his innermost feeHngs was W. T. Stead, who published 
during Rhodes's life an article ^ giving his impression of 
these confidences. Here we get Rhodes's musings on Hfe, 
on the destiny of the human race and on his own part in 
that destiny, — jerky musings, much like his jerky speeches 
and jerky conversations, with the logic implied rather 
than clearly expressed. Brought up in an orthodox house- 
hold, he appears during his solitary meditations on the 
Natal plantation and at Kimberley to have found that 
his boyish creeds rested on no secure foundation. Soon 
after its publication in 1872 a book entitled The Martyrdom 
of Man seems to have fallen into his hands and made 
a lasting impression on his mind. The author, Win wood 
Reade, was a strange Ishmael, who travelled much in 
Central Africa studying the native and imported Moham- 
medan forms of religion he found there ; basing his 
theories on these studies and on conclusions he derived 
from Buckle and Darwin, after a brilliant, if somewhat 
prejudiced, survey of the origin and development of all 
religions, he preaches, with all the passionate zeal of a 
religious enthusiast, that the only hope for man was in 
the exercise of his own faculties and energies unaided 
by appeals to non-existing supernatural powers. Rhodes 
in his turn, musing on destiny and influenced, no doubt, 
by this book, came to the conclusion that the Darwinian 
theory of evolution was the most likely explanation of the 
world. But this explanation did not lead him far, for he 
was faced by the further question : Is this evolution merely 
the result of bhnd forces or is it the law of some Supreme 
Being, some God ? To this question Rhodes admitted to 

^ Republished by Stead in his little volume on the Last Will and 
Testament of Cecil J. Rhodes. 

E 



50 CECIL RHODES 

himself that he neither knew nor was ever Hkely to know 
the answer for certain : nevertheless — and here comes the 
contrast between the practical miner and the more scholarly 
theorist, Reade — he felt bound to adopt one or other 
alternative as a working proposition. After weighing all 
the pros and cons in his own mind, he concluded on a fifty 
per cent chance that there was a God, and on that fifty per 
cent chance resolved to base his beliefs and his actions. 
\ On this assumption his next step was to determine the end 
set before Himself by God for the evolution of the world ; 
for, said he to himself, the proper business of man is to 
forward the end proposed by God. Running through 
various possible ends, wealth, worldly success and so on, 
he found that none of these were satisfactory, whereas 
on the broadest view of life and history, he argued, God 
was obviously trying to produce a type of humanity 
most fitted to bring peace, liberty and justice to the world 
and to make that type predominant. Only one race, so 
it seemed to him, approached God's ideal type, his own 
Anglo-Saxon race ; God's purpose then was to make the 
Anglo-Saxon race predominant, and the best way to help on 
God's work and fulfil His purpose in the world was to 
contribute to the predominance of the Anglo-Saxon race 
and so bring nearer the reign of justice, liberty and peace. 

It was a clumsy philosophy, like the man : a strange 
jumble of Darwin, Win wood Reade, and Gibbon, with an 
admixture of Aristotle and a distinct flavour of Ruskin's 
Inaugural Lecture, but real and personal to Rhodes by 
years of more or less disjointed and laborious thought of 
his own. In these clumsy thoughts we get glimpses of 
what was passing in his mind as he gazed over the veld 
in his long treks with the ox-wagon or sat moody and 
abstracted on his overturned bucket. Pringle, the South 
African poet, came to a more definite conclusion on the 
divine ordering of the world, but he sought for guidance 
from the same sky and the same earth as Rhodes : 

Where the barren earth and the burning sky, 
And the blank horizon, round and round. 
Spreads, void of Uving sight and sound — 
And here, while the night winds round me sigh, 
And the stars bum bright in the midnight sky. 



DREAMS 51 

As I sit apart by the desert stone. 

Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone, 

" A still small voice " comes through the wild 

(Like a father consoling a fretful child), 

Which banishes bitterness, wrath and fear — 

Saying, " Man is distant, but God is near ! " 

Many, too, have vaguely held the same creed of the divinely 
appointed mission of the British race ; but few, Uke Rhodes, 
have made it a direct spur to action throughout their lives 
and regarded themselves as the agents of the divine purpose 
in so doing. 

The first known result of these reflections wears a 
pathetically naive aspect. During his Long Vacation at 
Kimberley in 1877 he drew up his will. His wealth was 
still to make, but he felt assured that he would make it, 
and was determined that his prospective millions should 
serve his ultimate purpose, whether he Uved or died. With 
that curious mixture of child and prophet so often found 
in great men, this boyish document directed that a Secret 
Society should be endowed with the following objects : 
*' The extension of British rule throughout the world, . . . 
the colonization by British subjects of all lands where the 
means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and 
enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers 
of the entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley 
of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the 
whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not 
heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the 
Malay Archipelago, the sea-board of China and Japan, 
the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as 
an integral part of the British Empire, . . . colonial re- 
presentation in the Imperial Parliament, which may tend 
to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, 
and finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to here- 
after render wars impossible and promote the best interests 
of humanity." Sidney Shippard, the Attorney-General of 
Griqualand West, and Lord Carnarvon, or the Colonial 
Secretary for the time being, were appointed by this 
twenty-four-year-old enthusiast as trustees to carry out 
his wishes. There is something pathetic in the crudeness 



52 CECIL RHODES 

of the idea and the grandiose completeness with which the 
details are filled in. But the scheme appears less absurd 
if it is considered merely as the first sketch of a plan which 
Rhodes never lost sight of, and on which, gradually shedding 
some of the more extravagant details, he worked consistently 
through life. In 1882, 1888, 1891 and 1893 he made 
further wills, all with the same intention, less formally 
expressed perhaps, of forming a society to advance the 
interests of the British Empire, the only important changes 
being in the personaHty of the trustees. He found it difficult 
to get men who grasped and S3mipathized with his idea, and 
was glad to secure Stead as a trustee in 1891 ; but even he 
gave dissatisfaction and was expunged by a codicil to the 
last will of 1899. This will, to be referred to later, con- 
tained the final and most expHcit directions for a scheme 
to carry out the purpose already outhned in more ambitious 
language twenty-two years earlier. 

/ Rhodes was not content to leave what he counted as 
his main object in Ufe, " the foundation of so great a Power 
as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the 
best interests of humanity," to be attained merely by his 
heirs. He devoted his own life to it, even when he seemed 
absorbed by other schemes. To attain his purpose he had 
come to the conclusion that he needed wealth and that he 
needed friends. Without wealth he believed that little 
could be attained in the world. Speaking to Colquhoun 
about railway schemes in China he said, " You'll never do 
anything with it, Colquhoun ; you've got no money " ; 
and when Gordon told him that he had refused a room-full 
of treasure offered him by the Chinese Government, Rhodes, 
in no wise impressed by his magnanimity, replied : "I 
should have taken it and as many more rooms-full as they 
offered me : it is no use having big ideas if you have not 
the cash to carry them out." This conception of wealth 
as the chief motive power in the world obsessed him, and, 
in spite of his unselfish aims, was apt to distort his views 
and debase his standards. Such phrases as " philanthropy 
+ 5 per cent," which he coined to illustrate his view of a 
guiding principle in British poHcy, and his belief that men 
could generally be won over by self-interest are the outcome 



DREAMS 53 

of this obsession. The pursuit of wealth seemed at times 
the primary object of a man who cared Httle for its benefits 
to himself and had a soul above it. He even came to believe 
that with the material power wealth gave him he could 
achieve anything and thus in the end brought on his own 
undoing. 

When it came to the choice of friends to help him 
in his great object it was far otherwise. He recognized 
that the men influenced chiefly by money considerations 
were not the confidants and partners needed for his 
life-work. Such men had their uses and he employed 
many of them in his subsidiary schemes for acquiring 
wealth or in working out the details of his main scheme. 
Those he trusted with his ideals and to whom he spoke 
openly were men of the type he sought for his Secret 
Society. They were not easy to come by, especially in 
Kimberley. Rhodes told Stead that after the death of 
the dear friend whom he had at one time named as his 
trustee, the only man he could then think of to take his 
place was a financier, to whom he endeavoured to explain 
his ideas : " but," he added, " I could see by the look on 
his face that it made no impression, that the ideas did not 
enter his mind and that I was simply wasting my time." 
Yet he found a few, and these he trusted whole-heartedly. 
Pickering, the trustee who died, was one : for him Rhodes 
had a romantic affection ; he probably never loved any 
one so well : he sat day and night nursing him on his 
deathbed in 1888, neglecting all business for weeks at one 
of the most critical times in his fortunes : to him he had 
written that " the curious conditions of my will can only 
be carried out by a trustworthy person and I consider you 
one." With some of his friends of Oxford days he talked 
freely and tried, with more or less success, to impress them 
into the service of his great ideas. Among these was 
Maguire, whom later he brought out to South Africa, and 
Sir Charles Metcalfe, who came to construct railways. He 
gradually, too, acquired an extraordinary influence over 
some of his Kimberley friends and induced the most unlikely 
people to take up his causes and interests. One rough 
fellow, who had faithfully served Rhodes in strange corners 



54 CECIL RHODES 

of South Africa, hearing him once quote an incident of 
Roman history in a speech, was so abashed by his own 
ignorance that he forthwith followed his example and 
became an Oxford undergraduate. Another very different 
man, Alfred Beit, a Jew from Hamburg and the shrewdest 
financier of his time in South Africa, having made his 
fortune at Kimberley, stayed, under the spell of Rhodes's 
enthusiasm, to put his rare gifts at his command with a 
generosity and self-effacement rarely equalled. 

One, however, of Rhodes's friends stands out as most 
especially identified with his schemes and fortunes. On 
his return from Oxford to Kimberley in the autumn of 1878, 
Rhodes first met a young Scottish doctor, bom in the same 
year as himself, who had come out to share a practice 
with Dr. Prince, then the best-known doctor of the place. 
Leander Starr Jameson after taking a brilliant degree had 
originally come out to South Africa for the same reason 
as Rhodes and many others, to cure a weak lung. He 
soon made his mark professionally for his quickness of 
decision, and for the skilful and successful treatment of 
his cases. The acquaintance formed between Rhodes and 
Jameson quickly ripened into a close friendship. Jameson 
became one of the Twelve Apostles, as the mess presided 
over by Rhodes was called, and later, after Pickering's 
death, shared Rhodes's cottage opposite the club. Super- 
ficially the two men were a great contrast. Whereas Rhodes 
was a slow and laborious thinker on fines of his own, 
Jameson was sharp as a needle and quick at seeing another 
man's drift. Rhodes to the end retained many of the 
characteristics of a child : he was constantly surprised by 
his own thoughts and always anxious in any society to 
discuss fundamentals long accepted or ignored by his 
contemporaries ; Jameson was brilliant in conversation 
and too sophisticated a man of the world to talk about 
fundamentals unless he was very sure of his audience ; 
the one took long views and prepared his plans with infinite 
labour, the other was impetuous and impulsive ; in curious 
contrast with the lofty idealism of his aims, Rhodes had a 
strong vein of calculated cynicism in his methods, whereas 
Jameson's cynical manner was a mere defensive crust 



DREAMS 55 

assumed in the vain attempt to conceal his natural rashness. 
Probably these very differences helped to attract the two 
men to one another. Rhodes may well have felt that his 
soUd, deliberate nature found its right complement in 
Jameson's sympathy and lightness of touch and that his 
ambitious plans might be forwarded by the Doctor's readi- 
ness in finding ingenious expedients to overcome difficulties. 
But these bonds would have been sHght indeed had it not 
been for Jameson's whole-hearted devotion to Rhodes 
and what Rhodes confided to him of his schemes. Merri- 
man had then left Kimberley ; Pickering was dead ; so 
Jameson gradually fell into their place as the comrade 
who cared not, as so many others did, chiefly for the 
money-making capacity of his friend, but was moved by 
the same public spirit. During their early morning rides on 
the veld or in long-drawn-out talks at the club or in their 
lodgings, he and Rhodes used to discuss plans for a definite 
policy in South Africa, the first practical outcome of even 
more ambitious projects. Rhodes came to love Jameson, 
but it is characteristic of him that, with all his love and 
genuine admiration for the Doctor's qualities, he was not 
blinded to his defects of judgement : at any rate, he never 
made him a trustee for any of his wills until on his deathbed 
he added his name in a codicil. 

In those days Rhodes, when discussing his plans, used 
to pull out the map of South Africa and, laying a large 
hand on all the tracts up to the central lakes, say, " All 
this to be painted red ; that is my dream." The idea 
thus expressed was not so crude as its statement. The 
political creed he gradually evolved from his musings on 
destiny and final causes has been conveniently summarized, 
by one who had several opportunities of talking to him 
openly,^ under the following heads : - 

1. The world is made for the service of men, especially 
for civiUzed European men most capable of utilizing the 
crude resources of nature for the promotion of wealth and 
prosperity {i.e. the Anglo-Saxon race). 

2. England is unable to protect herself without overseas 
dominions. 

^ Sir Sidney Low, Nineteenth Century and After, May 1902. 



56 CECIL RHODES 

3. The British constitution is an absurd anachronism 
and should be re-modelled on the Unes of the American 
Union with federal self-governing colonies as the constituent 
states. 

4. The first aim of British statesmanship should be to 
find new areas of settlement and new markets to avoid 
penaUzing tariffs from foreign rivals. 

5. The largest tracts of unoccupied land are in Africa, 
which should be kept open for British colonization and 
commerce. 

6. As the key of South Africa hes in the Anglo-Dutch 
states, the federation of these states should be aimed at 
under the British flag, but without any meddhng by the 
home authorities. 

To carry out this comprehensive pohcy Rhodes was 
biding his time. For ten years he was content to amass 
wealth, to make such converts as he could at the Kimberley 
Club and to gain a sound foundation for pohtical power 
by the authority he was acquiring as one of the leading 
men of the diamond industry. He still took Httle part 
in local pohtics, but when occasion offered, such as Sir 
Bartle Frere's visit to the Fields, had shown a greater/ 
power of logic and more eloquence than anybody on the 
subject of the mining interests. He had shouldered his 
rifle in 1879 i^ ^ punitive expedition against some native 
marauders, during which he had come under fire near 
Christiania on the Vaal, and had first attracted the amused 
interest of the Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel Warren, by 
his absorption in a divinity cram-book for an Oxford 
examination during a railway journey. But in 1880, 
when he had formed his De Beers Mining Company, he felt 
that the time had come to make his views known to a wider 
audience. The Home Government had been meddling, with 
very serious results : so far from any prospect of the South 
African federation desired by Rhodes, Carnarvon's clumsy 
efforts to impose it had ended in a fiasco ; the Transvaal 
had been annexed and was on the eve of revolt. As Rhodes 
remarked bitterly years afterwards, the Transvaal would 
have been quite happy under British rule had it not been 
shockingly misgoverned by the Imperial Commissioner, Sir 



DREAMS 57 

Owen Lanyon, " who conducted the business on the Unes 
of a second-rate line regiment." The Dutch and EngUsh 
at the Cape, whom Rhodes wished to see united as a 
prehminary to all his plans for expansion, had been driven 
farther apart than ever before. The EngHsh still regarded 
the Dutch as a conquered and uncivihzed race, the Dutch 
stood aloof in sullen obstinacy. Rhodes saw that this 
would not do ; he was one of the few Enghshmen to respect 
the Boers and recognize that they were to be reckoned with. 
The Boer farmer in his eyes was as much a " producer *' 
as the Kimberley miner, and no more to be classed with 
mere ** loafers " ; and in his scheme of hfe he had a use 
for all '* producers." Long before Majuba he used to say 
to Jameson : " The Dutch are the coming race in South 
Africa and they must have their share in running the 
country." All this he felt needed saying, and that he was 
the man to say it. 

His opportunity came at the right moment. In 1880 
Griqualand West was at last incorporated with the Cape, 
partly owing to the strong representations made by Merriman 
and Rhodes himself, and thereby became entitled to send 
representatives to the Cape ParUament. Rhodes did not 
stand for Kimberley, as might have been expected, but 
chose a rural constituency, the district of Barkly West. 
Here had been the headquarters of the old river-diggings, 
but it was now deserted by nearly all save the Dutch farmers 
who had seen the diggers come and go. This choice of 
a constituency where there was a large Dutch vote was 
significant of Rhodes's considered poUcy and proved a 
great strength to him. He could speak not only for 
Kimberley miners with whom his business lay, but also for 
the Boer farmers who were his constituents ; and Barkly 
West remained faithful to him, through good report and ill, 
to the end of his life. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PLUNGE INTO CAPE POLITICS 

Rhodes took his seat in the House of Assembly in April 
1 88 1 and very soon made himself known to the political 
world of the Cape. He was still a digger in appearance 
and in his free and easy manners, and so he remained to 
the end. Thus he scandahzed Hofmeyr and other members 
of the more formal school by refusing to wear the 
conventional black coat and top hat : "I am still in 
Oxford tweeds/' he said in one of his speeches, " and I 
think I can legislate as well in them as in sable clothing." 
But he had a keen eye for business. To make certain of 
a paper that would always print his speeches and any 
information he might give it, he bought a share in the Cape 
Argus, at the same time assuring the editor he should never 
attempt to interfere with the opinions expressed in its 
columns, a promise he appears to have kept with this 
paper, as well as with others in which he was afterwards 
interested. He made useful friends at Government House. 
The new Governor and High Commissioner, Sir Hercules 
Robinson, chosen by Lord Kimberley to inaugurate a less 
adventurous and more concihatory pohcy than his 
predecessor Sir Bartle Frere, was attracted by the 
unconventional young digger, sympathized with his views 
on co-operation with the Dutch and was gradually led on 
to approve of his more ambitious schemes. The Imperial 
Secretary, Captain Graham Bower, R.N., proved an even 
more useful ally : for his knowledge of Cape politics and his 
fertihty of resource gave him great influence over the High 
Commissioner as well as over the Cape pohticians. Another 
friend at court was the Governor's private secretary, Newton, 

58 



THE PLUNGE INTO CAPE POLITICS 59 

who had been a friend of Rhodes at Oxford. Sir Richard 
Southey and J. B. Currey, early friends at Kimberley, 
made him welcome ; and very soon he was accepted by 
the rough and ready society of Cape Town in the genial 
colonial fashion which suited him well. He struck up a 
great friendship with Penfold, the port-captain, and under 
his tuition became an enthusiastic yachtsman in Table 
Bay. As usual with things that interested him, this sport 
gave him a happy analogy for one of his speeches. " It 
is as if," he said, *' I were a little saiUng boat in Table Bay 
and knew exactly what I am starting for. There are 
honourable members opposite who have racing boats, but 
I dare to challenge them and to say that they do not know 
what ports they are saiHng for ; and though they may be 
manned with a smarter crew, what with their backing and 
filling I am not sure they will not scuttle and go to the 
bottom." Once, too, when he was Prime Minister, he put 
his nautical experience to more practical use. During one 
of those tremendous storms which sometimes sweep over 
th6. Bay he heard that two lighters had got adrift and were 
in deadly peril ; he not only saw to it that the port tug 
should put out to their rescue but insisted in going out with 
her himself, and for a whole night was buffeted and tossed 
about by the angry seas in very serious danger. 

Above all, he revelled in the talk and arguments of the 
politicians and civil servants who foregathered at the 
Civil Service Club or at Poole's for limch, or at odd times 
invaded the rooms he shared with Captain Penfold in 
Adderley Street. In those days there were some good 
talkers and thinkers among them : Molteno, the first 
Prime Minister of the Cape ; Upington, the wild Irishman, 
witty and perennially in debt ; Sauer, shrewd and caustic ; 
Saul Solomon, the friend of the natives, who, in spite of his 
physical insignificance, had by his eloquence and passionate 
conviction won for himself a place apart in the House of 
Assembly ; Schreiner, the brilliant young advocate, in- 
corruptible and conscientious, ready to spHt a hair or 
prolong an argument to any hour of the night, who, with 
his brilHant sister Olive, was enormously attracted by 
Rhodes's personality. There, too, he found his old friend 



6o CECIL RHODES 

Merriman, sparkling with wit, and ever ready with the 
pungent phrase that clung to his victims for life ; full 
of strange lore, culled from every source, ancient or modem ; 
caustic without mahce to his oppon'^nts but generous to a 
fault with friends, such as Rhodes, in whom he beheved ; 
and always bubbling over with enthusiasm for some great 
cause or principle. 

But the man with whom, more than any in the Cape 
Parliament, Rhodes had for long the closest poHtical 
affinity was not usually to be found in these jovial parties. 
Jan Hofmeyr, Onze Jan as he became known throughout 
South Africa, was some eight years older than Rhodes, 
having been born in 1845 at Welgemeend, a farm on the 
slopes of Table Mountain. The ancestor who foimded the 
Cape branch of the family landed at Table Bay a century 
earher and Ues buried in the grounds of Groote Schuur, the 
Dutch Company's great bam at Rondebosch. By ancestry 
and birth rooted to the soil of the Cape Peninsula, Hofmeyr 
had all his education there too, and at sixteen took to 
journaHsm in Cape Town ; at twenty-six he was editor of 
the Zuid Afrikaan, the leading Dutch newspaper. He had 
become member for Stellenbosch two years before Rhodes 
took his seat, and was already one of the most powerful 
forces in Cape poUtics, for by his paper he had made himself 
the mentor of the Dutch party not only at the Cape but 
throughout South Africa. He had two great pohtical 
objects in Hfe : to awaken his Dutch fellow-countrymen to 
a sense of their own importance and, secondly, to form a 
federation of all South African states. With the first object 
he founded a union of Boer farmers, afterwards merged into 
the better known Afrikander Bond ; he urged Dutchmen to 
stand for parliament and encouraged the revival of the 
Dutch language. " I am a Httle bit of an Enghshman," 
he once said, " as far as language is concerned. The 
Enghshman loves his language and I mine. . . . The 
language question is a question of hfe and death. Despise 
the language and you despise your nationahty ; honour 
your language and you honour your nationahty." South 
African union he advocated as early as 1865 and even 
supported Carnarvon's and Froude's crazy scheme of 



THE PLUNGE INTO CAPE POLITICS 6i 

federation, speaking at a banquet in Froude's honour in 
1874 : in 1880, it is true, he voted against it, but only as a 
protest against the annexation of the Transvaal. Though 
a reformer in these respects he had all the conservative 
instincts of his own Dutch landowners. He supported 
protection and privilege for the farmer, wrote and spoke 
against responsible government in 1872, upheld strict 
orthodoxy in the Church and resisted Saul Solomon's 
progressive views on native policy. When Rhodes came to 
Capetown, he found Hofmeyr the unchallenged leader of 
the Dutch contingent in parliament, enlarged and brought 
to discipline by his exertions ; and, though his supremacy 
in the country districts was challenged by Du Toit's actively 
disloyal Afrikander Bond, he was on the eve of capturing 
that body and forcing it to abandon some of its extreme 
tenets. For his cautious and secret methods of political 
intrigue Merriman gave him the nickname of " The Mole." 
This had some justification. He was always inclined to 
overcome opposition by conciliatory methods and, like 
Rhodes himself, preferred to deal with a man by finding 
some common basis of agreement than to fight him. By 
nature he was cautious and averse to undertaking personal 
responsibility. Thus he only once held office in a ministry, 
and that for a very brief spell, preferring to be the Warwick 
of ministries that displeased him and the secret counsellor 
of those that supported his views. He several times gave 
considerable umbrage to his Transvaal cousins by his 
timidity : recently, for example, he had disapproved of the 
republicans* revolt because he feared they would be beaten 
by England, and even after Majuba urged them at once to 
desist from further hostilities. But, though economical of 
his dogmatic assertions, on questions of principle he never 
had any hesitation in coming out into the open and express- 
ing his views, however unpopular they might be. He had 
protested vehemently against the annexation of the Trans- 
vaal, and supported that country in its efforts to regain 
freedom, while as a political organizer he did more than 
any man to make the Dutch a force in South Africa. 

Both in appreciation of the Dutch element in South 
Africa and in a desire for federation Rhodes had points in 



62 CECIL RHODES 

common with Hofmeyr. But in April 1881 the divergence 
between them seemed more marked than the agreement. 
Majuba had just been fought and negotiations for the 
retrocession of the Transvaal opened. Nearly every English- 
man in South Africa had a sense of bitter humihation, 
and Rhodes would hardly have been human had he not 
shared in this feeling. An acquaintance speaks of the 
*' unspeakable anger of the militant young Englishman " 
at Gladstone's surrender and his determination " not 
to be trampled on by these Dutchmen." Hofmeyr he 
regarded as a dangerous man full of machinations against 
England. Hofmeyr for his part had been told that Rhodes 
was " a regular beefsteak, John Bull Englishman," and 
what was perhaps worse, *' a young Oxford Englishman, 
full, some said, of the exclusive traditions of Oxford." 
But these feelings did not last : in the same conversation in 
which he expressed his indignation Rhodes admitted that 
he did not disUke the Dutch and that the best plan would 
be to work with Hofmeyr : and when the two men were 
brought together by a friend their distrust of one another 
vanished. Fourteen years later, at a banquet to Hofmeyr, 
each gave his account of this first meeting. While still 
finding many points of disagreement, Rhodes said of 
Hofmeyr that he was the fairest opponent he had ever met, 
and Hofmeyr declared that this talk had laid the foundation 
of a lasting friendship ; " the secret," he added, " of this 
friendship was this : I found in Mr. Rhodes the true 
Englishman but at the same time the man who could make 
allowances for true nationalism existing in other people. 
Also, I remember, about the time we were introduced, the 
Transvaal War broke out, and Mr. Rhodes — perhaps as it 
behoved him as an Englishman ^ — was all against the 
Boers and Transvaal independence. I was on the other 
side. But when the war was over we had a talk with one 
another, and I said to Mr. Rhodes, * It is an awful pity that 
the war broke out.* I was surprised when Mr. Rhodes 

1 This is a characteristic instance of the Dutchman's higL standard 
of honour even for an enemy. Louis Botha had the same standard. 
The story is told that shortly after the Boer War he met an Englishman in 
London who said to him effusively : "I always hoped you would win," 
whereupon Botha turned his back on him. ' 



THE PLUNGE INTO CAPE POLITICS 63 

said : ' No, it is not. I have quite changed my opinion. 
It is a good thing. It has made Enghshmen respect 
Dutchmen and made them respect one another.' Well, 
when an Englishman could speak like that to a Dutchman, 
they are not far from making common cause with one 
another." They thus found that they had aims in common, 
the one, as it has been well said, with his British point of 
view, which he looked at from the colonial angle, the other 
with his colonial point of view, which he tried to broaden 
from the standpoint of Britain and the Empire as a whole. 
Misunderstandings as to important details and methods 
were not entirely removed at first, but with growing acquaint- 
ance the two men found it possible to work as allies. 

Rhodes's first three sessions were chiefly taken up with 
discussions on the Basuto War, which had been brought 
on by the decision of the Prime Minister, Sir Gordon Sprigg, 
to disarm the Basutos under some forgotten statute. 
Rhodes and the Kimberley people disHked the war, because 
they had many Basutos working for them in the mines, 
and as one man said, " After all, we sold them the guns ; 
they bought them out of their hard-earned wages, and it 
is hard lines to make them give them up again." Early 
in the first session Sprigg fell, partly for his mismanagement 
of this business, partly owing to the general dissatisfaction 
with his government : the Diamond Fields members, for 
example, headed by Rhodes, bluntly told him they must 
withdraw their support because of his failure to extend 
the railway to Kimberley ; he had also alienated Hofmeyr 
and the Bond, who had originally helped him to office and 
who now transferred their support to his successor, Scanlen. 
The Basutoland question itself has no great interest to-day 
except as an illustration of the Home government's unfor- 
tunate indecision in South African affairs. In 1854, when 
the Orange River sovereignty had been given back to the 
Free State Boers, Basutoland, the native state on its eastern 
border, had been left in the air : fifteen years later, after a 
succession of wars between the Boers and the Basutos, it 
had been proclaimed under British protection, then two 
years afterwards given over to the Cape. Finally, in 1883, 
when the inability of the Cape to deal with the problem 



64 CECIL RHODES 

had been proved by three years of desultory and incon- 
clusive fighting, the Imperial Government agreed to take 
back the country under its protection, in which condition 
it has fortunately remained ever since. 

From the outset Rhodes had advocated this solution, 
not from any love of " meddling by the Home Government," 
but simply on the ground that the Cape was not in a position 
to deal effectively with a country so far removed from its 
natural interests ; and on the score of expense. "Are we a 
great and independent South Africa ? " he asked : "No, 
we are only the population of a third-rate English city 
spread over a great country," and in these circumstances he 
declared that it was the duty of the Imperial Government 
to bear the burden. But Scanlen did not dare to call in 
the Imperial Government, such was its unpopularity in 
South Africa, till every other means had been tried. But 
while rejecting Rhodes's advice for the time being he 
persuaded him to accept a seat on a commission to decide 
on claims for compensation by loyal Basutos ; he also 
sent for Colonel Gordon from his " barracks and drains " 
at Mauritius to reorganize the colonial forces and in the 
hope that he would finish the business without bloodshed 
or heavy expense. 

Rhodes, for his part, was quite wilUng to go to Basuto- 
land to study the problem at first hand and did his work 
on the commission thoroughly. Five months were spent 
in taking evidence at Maseru, Leribe, Mafeteng and other 
places ; Rhodes made a special report dissenting from 
his colleagues, who wished to extend the compensation to 
two white traders, on the ground that such a claim had 
never been recognized by any government. " Even 
England," he argued, " with all her wealth, did not 
compensate her loyal subjects in India for the losses 
sustained in the recent mutiny," and he protested " against 
this recommendation for compensation to be paid out of 
the public funds of a poor and embarrassed Colony on 
principles which are not founded on the practice and 
precedent of the older and richer countries of the world." 
Though he was in a minority of one, his arguments on this 
point prevailed. 



A 



THE PLUNGE INTO CAPE POLITICS 65 

While he was in Basutoland one of those rare meetings, 
of which the scanty records are so tantahzing to the 
historian, took place ; when two outstanding men of a 
generation come face to face and then pass on. Rhodes 
and Gordon had longer and more interesting talk than 
WelHngton and Nelson on that one historic occasion in the 
Secretary of State's waiting-room ; but afterwards they 
went their ways never to meet again. Characteristic too 
of the British Empire was this meeting of two such men, 
called from the ends of the earth and thrown together for 
a brief space in a barbarous corner of South Africa — 
Gordon, who had taken it all in the day's work, as a major 
in the Engineers, to organize and command the forces of 
the great Chinese Empire, to rule with absolute sway the 
Soudan and equatorial Africa, to make a flying trip to 
Ireland, between two terms of duty, to ascertain the merits 
of the Irish question, to build barracks in Mauritius or to 
bring hope and a prospect in life to the boys of the ragged 
schools of Woolwich ; and Rhodes, the rough diamond- 
digger, with all his yet unrealized dreams for the advance 
of the British race in Africa and throughout the world. 
To Gordon, the practical mystic convinced of his mission 
humbly to work out the wiU of God, Rhodes in these 
communings under the African sky may well have 
unbosomed himself of his clumsy philosophy and his fifty 
per cent God and all his dreams ; for the older man, though 
surer in his convictions, would have understood. Strange 
as it may seem, Rhodes, the younger by twenty years, 
appears in practical matters to have taken the mentor's part. 
He it was who explained to Gordon how fooHsh he was 
not to accept the Chinese treasure, and told him not to talk 
to the Basutos as if he were their supreme lord, but to 
remember that he was only the servant of Sauer, the 
Minister for native affairs ; and Gordon took the reproof 
meekly and went next day to explain this to the natives, 
adding, in an aside to Rhodes, " I did it because it was the 
right thing, but it was hard, very hard." At any rate 
Gordon believed in the young man, and on parting begged 
him to stay and work with him ; but Rhodes had to be 
about his own business and must needs go. " There are 

F 



66 CECIL RHODES 

few men in the world," replied Gordon, " to whom I would 
make such an offer, but of course you will have your own 
way. I never met a man so strong for his own opinion ; 
you think your views are always right." So they parted. 
Once more Rhodes heard from him ; when Gordon was 
starting on his last journey, he telegraphed to Rhodes to 
join him ; and Rhodes once more had to refuse, for he 
was just about to join the Cape Ministry. But when, 
little more than two years after these meetings in Basuto- 
land, he heard of the tragedy of Khartoum, he was deeply 
moved and kept on repeating sadly : "I am sorry I was 
not with him ; I am sorry I was not with him." 

By 1883 the Imperial solution for the Basuto imbroglio, 
which Rhodes had seen to be inevitable, was at last 
accepted. His friend Merriman, a member of Scanlen's 
Ministry, arranged the terms in London, and Scanlen 
proposed in the Cape Parliament the re-transfer of the 
country to the Home Government. The only opponents 
left to the proposal were Hofmeyr and his followers ; so 
great was the Dutchman's distrust of the Imperial factor 
in South African affairs that he had a plan for joint action 
with the Free State to bring the Basutos to submission. 
Unfortunately for him. President Brand was quite content 
that the Imperial power alone should do the police work 
on his eastern border, and rejected Hofmeyr' s scheme. In 
the debate in the House, Rhodes took a leading part on 
behalf of the Government. He had already won a consider- 
able position for himself as a politician. At first his rather 
nervous, excitable manner of speaking, his squeaky voice, 
his jerky utterance, and his uncouth gestures had told 
against him ; but as the hearers of Chatham had felt, so 
men had begun to feel, in a lesser degree, about Rhodes 
that " the man was infinitely greater than his words." 
In his second session he was already recognized as the 
leader of the powerful contingent from the Diamond Fields, 
though he had always proclaimed his indifference to party 
ties or local prejudices, because, in his own words, " localism 
is the curse of South Africa." He had made approaches to 
Hofmeyr by a sympathetic attitude to his proposal to 
allow the Dutch language to be used in debate, and a well- 



THE PLUNGE INTO CAPE POLITICS 67 

turned compliment to him on the terms of the loyal address 
he had drawn up on the conclusion of peace with the 
Transvaal. But in this debate on Basutoland he took 
occasion to make plain where he differed from Hofmeyr on 
methods of securing South African union. 

Hofmeyr during this and the preceding year had been 
carrying on his great fight to capture the Afrikander Bond. 
Its founder, the Rev. S. J. du Toit, who afterwards became 
one of Rhodes's most devoted adherents, had frankly 
stated in his paper that " the one hindrance to Confederation 
is the English flag. Let them take that away, and within 
a year the Confederation under the free African flag would 
be established.*' Hofmeyr was alarmed at such a doctrine, 
for he, like Rhodes, believed the only hope of union to lie 
in full co-operation between English and Dutch, and, as 
he said, " five Englishmen in the Bond would help South 
African unity more than a hundred Boers " ; but such a 
doctrine would naturally keep off any Englishman. On 
the advice, therefore, of a friend, he himself joined the 
Bond, and by ceaseless negotiation and persuasive talk, 
of which he was a past-master, brought round the majority 
to drop the disloyal part of their programme ; still, to secure 
that end, he thought it prudent to admit that South Africa 
might one day be independent, though he never regarded 
the eventuality as within the practical politics of the next 
fifty years. At any rate, Hofmeyr, by joining a body which 
had once expressed such sentiments about the British flag, 
had become suspect to Rhodes ; and in this speech he 
determined to have it out with him. 

At the outset he easily disposed of Hofmeyr's plan for 
joint action with the Free State in Basutoland by pointing 
out that the Free State itself did not welcome the sugges- 
tion : *' that people are surely the best judges of the 
question, and they say they want to be protected by the 
Imperial Government.'* Then turning to the wider ques- 
tion of union, " I would like to hear," he added, '' what 
Mr. Hofmejn: is reported to have said about a United States 
of South Africa under its own flag. ... I have my own 
views as to the future of South Africa, and I believe in a 
United States of South Africa, but as a portion of the 



68 CECIL RHODES 

British Empire. I believe that confederated states in a 
colony under responsible government would each be practi- 
cally an independent republic, but I think we should also 
have all the privileges of the tie with the Empire. Possibly 
there is not a very great divergence between myself and 
the honourable member for Stellenbosch, excepting always 
the question of the flag." In a later speech Rhodes 
crystalHzed his view in the phrase : " the government of 
South Africa by the people of South Africa with the Imperial 
Flag for defence." 

Hofmeyr was able to answer this question satisfactorily, 
for Rhodes's formula exactly corresponded with his own 
view of South African union ; of which he gave ample 
proofs, when later he attended two colonial conferences 
as a delegate for the Cape. In the following month Rhodes 
welcomed his assurances and praised the " high aim . . . 
of the honourable member for Stellenbosch. His aspirations 
are for the union of South Africa." Thus early in his 
parliamentary career Rhodes laid down the guiding principle 
of his South African poUcy, and found, as he had hoped, 
that for this policy he could work in hearty co-operation 
with the leader of his Dutch fellow-colonists. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS — BECHUANALAND 

Rhodes was the more willing to admit the " meddlesome 
Home Government " into Basutoland, because he felt that 
a call would soon be made on all the colony's resources to 
deal with the more vital problem of Bechuanaland. In 
this territory, he believed, the future not only of the Cape 
but of all South Africa was involved. 

Bechuanaland, bounded on the east by the Transvaal 
and by Damaraland and Namaqualand on the west, forms 
the isthmus leading from Griqualand West to the interior 
of Africa. The trackless Kalahari desert makes a great 
part of it uninhabitable, except by a few wandering 
Bushmen, but on the east, close to the Transvaal border, 
there is a strip of good land where the Bechuana tribes 
congregated in their villages, Taungs, Mafeking, Kanye 
and Shoshong. Along this strip, always hugging the 
Transvaal border, was the well-marked track by which 
explorers, hunters, missionaries and traders travelled into 
the interior, and which was the main approach to the 
Tati Gold Fields, opened in 1869, Matabeleland and the 
hunting grounds of the Zambesi.^ Made famous by men 
like Livingstone and Moffat, Baines, Mauch, Gordon 
Cumming and Selous, the track was known as the English 
road or the Missionaries' road. Its proximity, however, 
to the Transvaal border had not been without its dangers. 
During the 'fifties the Boers used to raid the border villages 

1 A petition from Kimberley in 1884, which shows the inspiration of 
Rhodes, describes it as " the great trade route to the interior, well known 
to the English people through the narratives of Livingstone and Moffat . . . 
along it the trade and commerce of the interior have for years passed 
unmolested." 

69 



70 CECIL RHODES 

of the natives and interfere with European travellers on 
the road. Thus in 1852 they sacked Livingstone's mission 
station at Shoshong and later told Moffat that he must 
obtain leave from their Government to travel to his own 
headquarters in Bechuanaland. Sir George Grey and other 
governors protested against these aggressions ; the Keate 
award of 1871 and the Pretoria Convention ten years 
later definitely excluded the republic from interfering in 
Bechuanaland. But the Boers never ceased to regard this 
borderland as coming naturally within their sphere, and 
were Hkely to continue doing so until it had been placed 
under some more powerful government than that of the 
native chiefs. 

Several Englishmen before Rhodes had come to the 
conclusion that the only way of safeguarding this approach 
to the interior was to bring it within the British dominions. 
In 1 87 1 the missionary Mackenzie had advocated this ; 
Southey had always contemplated an advance beyond 
Griqualand West ; in 1878 Sir Bartle Frere had urged 
the Colonial Secretary to proclaim a protectorate over 
Bechuanaland as far north as Lake Ngami, not far short 
of the Zambesi ; and long before these Livingstone had 
boasted — ^not idly : " The Boers resolved to shut up the 
interior and I determined to open the coimtry ; and we 
shall see who have been most successful in resolution, 
they or I." Rhodes had come to the problem afresh, with 
special opportunities for understanding its importance. 
Living at Kimberley, the starting-point of the up-country 
trade, he knew well the value of this trade to Cape Colony ; 
in one year alone, he told the House, a single Kimberley 
firm had done business in Bechuanaland of the value of 
;f 100,000. At Kimberley he was constantly seeing hunters 
or missionaries setting forth along the road or returning 
with the booty of the chase, and with tales of the country 
and natives of the far interior. He himself had travelled 
along part of the road in his trek with Herbert and again 
with Warren's expedition against the Korannas. As a 
result of endless talks with Merriman, Pickering, Jameson 
and other friends, and no doubt with Warren and his staff 
in 1879, he had long formed the conviction that Bechuana- 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS ^t 

land, the key to the interior, must be secured. But he 
differed in two points from others who had previously 
held this view. First, he beHeved that the Cape itself, as 
the dominant state in South Africa, should undertake the 
task, instead of calling upon the Imperial Government to 
proclaim a protectorate. Secondly, he believed that the 
question could be raised above a contention on racial lines, 
and that EngUsh and Dutch might be induced to co-operate 
in forwarding a South African policy. In a word, he beHeved 
that the extension of British influence could only be worked 
in accordance with the sentiment of South Africans and 
with the help of the Cape politicians, English and Dutch. 

In his second session, when for the first time he called 
attention publicly to the question, the southern part of 
Bechuanaland was in a hopeless state of confusion and 
anarchy. Native troubles on the border had given the 
usual opportunity for the designs of needy European 
adventurers. Mankoroane, the Batlapin chieftain at 
Taungs, just beyond the Griqualand West border, had a 
feud with Massouw, his neighbour within Transvaal terri- 
tory ; and farther north, at Mafeking, Montsioa was at 
war with Moshette, a rival chief of the BarolongB. 
Mankoroane and Montsioa were regarded as friendly by 
the English ; the cause of their antagonists was favoured 
by the Boers. Both sides in the two disputes made large 
promises of land to any white volunteers who should come 
to their help, and it may be imagined what a disorderly 
crew of shady adventurers, cattle and horse thieves and 
land sharks had been attracted to the four camps by this 
bait ; in fact, the whole borderland of Griqualand West 
and the south-west Transvaal had become a veritable 
Alsatia. Both Mankoroane and Montsioa, the chiefs with 
English leanings, got the worst of it, and by the end of 
1882 had been obhged to cede considerable portions of 
their territory to satisfy the claims of their rivals' white 
mercenaries, mostly Boers. These Boer volunteers, as 
they were called, proclaimed independent republics over 
the territory they had thus acquired. Stellaland was the 
name given to the republic formed on Mankoroane's lands, 
with its capital at Vryburg, and Van Niekerk, a Transvaal 



72 CECIL RHODES 

farmer, as the administrator ; the other, in Montsioa's 
country, was called Land of Goshen, and was administered 
by one Gey Van Pittius, with his seat of government at 
Rooigrond, close to Maf eking. But the establishment of 
these republics brought no peace ; the defeated chieftains 
were always on the look out for their revenge ; cattle and 
horse thefts, raids and reprisals went on as before. The 
Transvaal Government, naturally disturbed at the unsettled 
state of their border, urged the Imperial Government to 
make some arrangement by which peace could be main- 
tained. But the Imperial Government would not hear of 
accepting any further responsibihty north of the present 
border, nor would they allow the Transvaal to encroach 
beyond the boundaries laid down by the London Convention. 
The danger, as it appeared to Rhodes, in this chaotic 
state of affairs lay chiefly in these new republics of Stella- 
land and Goshen, both of which lay right athwart the road 
into the interior. Whether they remained independent or, 
as seemed more probable, were absorbed by their neighbour 
the Transvaal, they were a standing menace to communica- 
tions with all the country up to the Zambesi. Already 
there were reports of natives returning home from the 
Kimberley mines being robbed and impeded on their way 
through the new republics, and the fear of high tariffs and 
other obstacles to trade and travel through them was, to 
judge by the example of the Transvaal customs duties, no 
visionary danger. So, after uttering his preliminary warn- 
ing in 1882, in the following year he got himself appointed 
on a commission to investigate some dispute about the 
boundaries of Griqualand West. Interpreting his instruc- 
tions largely, he took occasion to visit Mankoroane at 
Taungs as weU as Van Niekerk at Vryburg. From the 
former he obtained a long catalogue of his grievances 
against the Stellaland volunteers and an offer to cede his 
country to the Cape. At Vryburg he found intrigues afoot 
for the annexation of the new republic by the Transvaal, 
but secured a petition from a considerc-ble minority of the 
settlers, requesting annexation by the Cape Government. 
He found nobody who wanted to be taken over by the 
Imperial Government. 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 73 

The occasion was critical, for the Transvaal deputation 
was soon starting on its way to London to press for modifica- 
tions ot the Pretoria Convention, especially in relation to 
the republic's south-western boundary, and Merriman was 
already there to discuss preliminaries with the Colonial 
Ofiice. So impressed was Rhodes with the need for 
immediate action that he at once got into communication 
over the telegraph wires with the Prime Minister, Scanlen. 
For the next month animated conversations between the 
two were carried on by this means, Rhodes pointing out that 
unless prompt action were taken hostilities would break out 
afresh, urging that Merriman should be instructed to 
protest against " an inch more territory " being handed 
over to the Transvaal ; " part with the interior road," he 
added, " and you are driven into the desert " ; and that the 
only statesmanlike course was to meet the Cape Parliament 
with a proposal to accept Mankoroane's offer and the 
petition he had obtained in Stellaland for annexation to 
the Cape. " For goodness' sake," he implored, *' meet 
Parliament with some pohcy. ... I put it to you, if you 
have to go out, is it not better to go out on what is a real 
pohcy ? " 

But Rhodes's prayers and taunts were unavailing. 
Scanlen was too much afraid of the Dutch vote to propose 
annexation and would give only non-committal answers. 
So on his return to Cape Town Rhodes himself proposed in 
Parliament that a resident commissioner should be sent 
to Mankoroane, as a preliminary to the annexation of 
Stellaland, and tried to arouse the House " to the 
supreme importance of this question of Bechuanaland . . . 
a question upon the proper treatment of which depends 
the whole future of this colony. ... I look upon this 
.Bechuanaland territory," he continued, " as the Suez 
Canal of the trade of this country, the key of its road to the 
interior. . . . The question before us really is this, whether 
this colony is to te confined to its present borders, or 
whether it is to become the dominant state in South Africa 
— whether, in fact, it 1^ to spread its civilization over the 
interior." Some said, he went on, turning with a tompli- 
ment to Hofmeyr and his followers, that it would be just 



74 CECIL RHODES 

as good for their purposes if Bechuanaland fell to the 
Transvaal ; but would it be so ? Already the Transvaal 
was making it difficult for Cape traders by high tariffs ; if 
then the Transvaal was allowed to close the only door to 
the interior by similar tariffs it would mean ruin to the 
Cape trade. He said that from no animus against the 
Dutch as a race ; on the contrary, he would confirm the 
titles of the Dutch settlers in Stellaland, only they should 
be brought under the jurisdiction of the dominant state in 
South Africa. 

This appeal fell unheeded from his lips. Hofmeyr, with 
the recollection of the annexation of the Transvaal fresh 
in his mind, thought then that the only way of maintaining 
the Dutch cause was to support the Transvaal through 
thick and thin ; he also felt with some reason that these 
border quarrels concerned the Transvaal more intimately 
than Cape Colony, and that the Imperial Government's 
policy of refusing to intervene, while not allowing the 
Transvaal to do so, was like that of the dog in the manger. 
Apart from the Dutch, the question at that time interested 
very few of the Cape colonists. It required pressure from 
an unexpected quarter to arouse the feeling which Rhodes 
and his Kimberley friends had been unable to stimulate. 
The action of Germany now, and not for the last time, 
helped him in a difficulty. 

The scramble for Africa had just begun when Rhodes 
entered pubHc life. In 1879 Stanley inaugurated King 
Leopold's Congo Association and began to mark out 
territory for that philanthropic society ; M. de Brazza 
soon followed suit for the French in the same region ; 
other French explorers started annexing territory farther 
up on the west coast ; and the Republic obtained a free 
hand in Tunis. Italy turned longing eyes on Tripoli and 
on the Red Sea Httoral. Portugal began to revive claims 
on the east and west coasts of Africa that had lain dormant 
for nearly three centuries. Germany also determined to 
have her share. Hitherto, under Bismarck's influence, she 
had confined herself to Europe ani planted no colonies ; 
" for us," said the great chancellor, when pressed to expand 
overseas, " it would be just like the silken sables in the noble 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 75 

families of Poland, who have no shirts to their backs " ; 
and he had no desire to compete on this score with France 
and England, then the chief colonizing powers. ' England's 
fleet rendered rivalry hopeless there, while France was 
encouraged by him to devote her energies to Tunis and 
Tonkin to divert her from Alsace-Lorraine and other un- 
pleasant memories of 1870. But even before 1870 there 
had been a colonial party in Germany ; and the success 
of that war had strengthened it. German missionaries 
and traders and a few explorers had long been active in 
South and East Africa ; the great merchants and shippers 
of Bremen and Hamburg had founded colonization societies ; 
a widely read article by E. von Weber in 1879, advocating 
the estabhshment of German influence in Delagoa Bay, the 
Transvaal and Matabeleland, " to pave the way for the 
foundation of a German African empire of the future," 
had stimulated the popular imagination. In 1882 Bismarck 
himself yielded to the growing feeling and began to take 
a hand in the scramble. He went warily to work, leaving 
France and other countries to their own devices, and 
picking out those parts of Africa in which England alone 
was interested, because at that time England had become 
involved in the Egyptian morass, whereby she had ahenated 
France, and was prepared to pay a heavy price in other 
quarters for Germany's support. Besides, it was thought 
that her opposition could be discounted, for though she 
had long enjoyed free scope for her trade and poKtical 
influence on the Zanzibar coast, in South Africa and on the 
Gold Coast, and though most of the discoveries in Central 
Africa had been made by her explorers, she had hitherto 
been averse to declaring protectorates or annexing territory, 
even when pressed to do so by the native chiefs. Gladstone, 
too, was in power, and he had already expressed his appre- 
hensions of African adventure. " Our first site acquired in 
Egypt," he had written in 1877,^ "... will be the almost 
certain egg of a Forth African Empire that will grow 
and grow . . . till we finally join hands across the Equator 
with Natal and Cape Town, to say nothing of the Transvaal 
and Orange River on the south, or of Abyssinia or Zanzibar 

1 Nineteenth Century for August 1877. 



76 CECIL RHODES 

to be swallowed by way of viaticum on our journey " : a 
curious forecast of Rhodes's own projects and of the opposi- 
tion which he would have to meet. 

The first point of German attack, in south-west Africa, 
was well chosen. The native territories of Damaraland and 
Namaqualand, extending from the Orange River to the 
Portuguese claims in Angola and from the Atlantic to 
Bechuanaland on the east, had always been regarded as 
within the Cape sphere of interest, but had never been 
formally annexed. Ever since 1867 various suggestions 
for the annexation of the country had been put before the 
Home Government by the Cape Ministries, by Sir Bartle 
Frere and even by the German Government, who desired 
protection for the Rhenish missionaries established among 
the natives. In 1878 Lord Carnarvon had grudgingly 
agreed to take over Walfisch Bay, the only good harbour 
on the coast ; but this was the Umit of concession ; and in 
1880 Sir Hercules Robinson had been explicitly instructed 
by Lord Kimberley that " the Government will not give 
its support to plans for extending British jurisdiction over 
Great Namaqua and Damaraland.'' When, therefore, on 
May I, 1883, the German flag was hoisted at Angra Pequeiia 
on the coast of Namaqualand, the English had only them- 
selves to blame. Bismarck even went so far as to enquire 
whether England would protect the factory to be set up 
there by the Bremen merchant Liideritz, before he declared 
a German protectorate ; and added that he had " not the 
least design to estabHsh any footing in South Africa." 
But when the German flag had once been hoisted he 
insisted on his rights, and a British ship sent from the 
Cape to Angra Pequeiia was warned off by a German 
gun-boat. 

For some months afterwards animated discussions went 
on between the English and German Foreign Offices about 
the German claim to this territory. Too late, our Foreign 
Minister, Lord Granville, and Lord Jerby, his colleague 
at the Colonial Office, saw the danger of this intrusion by 
a foreign power into South Africa. Derby sent urgent 
messages to the Cape Ministry for arguments to rebut the 
German contention that we had no rights there. Un- 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 77 

fortunately Scanlen's Ministry was then preoccupied with 
its own precarious position and apparently did not realize 
the importance of haste. Lord Derby's telegrams were 
left unanswered, and the proof, for what it was worth, of 
a virtual administration of the territory in Sir Bartle Frere's 
time was never produced. Rhodes himself is not exempt 
from blame in this matter, for during the seven weeks 
before Scanlen's fall he was occupying the post of Treasurer- 
General in the Ministry. Apparently he and Merriman 
knew the danger of delay, for, as Rhodes himself related 
afterwards, they used to say daily to one another, " We 
must have Damaraland," but they were unable to impress 
their zeal upon the rest of the Cabinet, before it went out 
ingloriously " on the question of a bug," in other words, 
on some trivial agricultural matter. On April 24, 1884, 
Bismarck had formally announced a German protectorate 
over Damaraland and Namaqualand, which, in spite of the 
belated protest of Scanlen's successor, was recognized by 
Lord Granville on June 22. 

This move by Germany had one good result, however, 
in reinforcing Rhodes's arguments for keeping a way 
open through Bechuanaland. The position in South Africa 
was now somewhat similar to that of the English and 
French in America at the beginning of the Seven Years' 
War. The Enghsh on the American sea-board were then 
in danger of being cut off from the interior by the efforts 
of the French to connect their colonies of Canada and 
Louisiana by a series of posts immediately behind the 
English settlements. Once more the English appeared to 
be in danger of losing their chance of expansion into the 
interior by an understanding between Germany and the 
Transvaal about closing the way through Bechuanaland, 
or even, as Rhodes suggested, by further aggression on 
Germany's part. " Do you think," he asked, *' that if 
the Transvaal had Bechuanaland, it would be allowed to 
keep it ? Would not Bismarck have some quarrel with 
the Transvaal, and without resources, without men, what 
could they do ? Germany would come across from her 
colony of Angra Pequeiia. There would be some excuse 
to pick a quarrel — some question of brandy or guns or 



78 CECIL RHODES 

something — and then Germany would stretch from Angra 
Pequena to Delagoa Bay. I was never more satisfied 
with my own views than when I saw the recent develop- 
ment of the pohcy of Germany. What was the bar in 
Germany's way ? Bechuanaland. ... If we were to stop 
at Griqualand West, the ambitious projects of Germany 
would be attained." These fears of Rhodes were not 
lessened by the extraordinary marks of favour with which 
the Transvaal delegation, then in Europe, was received in 
Berlin. 

Fortunately for Rhodes's views, the Imperial Govern- 
ment had left the question of Bechuanaland open by the 
London Convention of February 1884. The Transvaal 
delegation had urged strongly their claims for a rectification 
of the border which would put the republics of Stellaland 
and Goshen and the southern part of the missionaries' 
road under their control. But feeling in England, as well 
as in the Cape, had been awakened to this question of 
Bechuanaland, partly by the German advance, partly 
owing to the reaction from Gladstone's surrender of 1881. 
The missionary Mackenzie had been stirring up interest 
at home by public meetings and newspaper articles, and 
by his tales of Boer oppression of the natives had enUsted 
the support of powerful bodies like the Aborigines Protec- 
tion Society, and such men as Sir T. Fowell Buxton and 
W. E. Forster. Sir Hercules Robinson, called home to 
advise the Colonial Office, was strongly against the Boer 
claims, and though Scanlen, representing the Cape Ministry, 
was weak, he was kept up to the mark by his colleague 
Merriman's messages from Cape Town, as well as by Rhodes. 
In the end, Lord Derby had excluded Stellaland and Goshen 
as well as the trade route from the Transvaal, and had 
received from Scanlen a promise to contribute to the 
expenses of a protectorate over Bechuanaland. 

But even so, the Imperial Government did not grasp 
the nettle firmly and declare a protectorate at once. 
Various agents were sent up to investigate affairs and 
exercise an ill-defined authority without clear instructions 
as to their proceedings. First came Captain Graham 
Bower to report ; he reported that the Stellalanders were 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 79 

an orderly community and was favourably impressed by 
Van Niekerk. Next, in April 1884, the Rev. John Mackenzie 
was sent as deputy-commissioner. No worse choice could 
have been made, for though he had done good work in 
directing public attention to the country, and during his 
twenty years as a missionary there had won the confidence 
of the natives, he was singularly wanting in tact and was 
hated by every Dutchman in South Africa for his virulent 
attacks on that race. He went up with the fixed ideas 
that the settlers in Goshen and Stellaland were rascals and 
freebooters who must be dislodged, that the imperial might 
of England must be displayed, and that annexation by the 
Cape was a solution to be avoided at all costs, owing to the 
large Dutch element in that colony. His actions were in 
keeping with his prejudices. In Land Goshen he made no 
attempt to conciliate the settlers and made no protest 
against a surprise attack by Montsioa on their capital 
Rooigrond ; in Stellaland he quarrelled with Van Niekerk 
and attempted to divide his followers ; he raised the British 
standard there without any authority to do so, demanded 
a large force of police to overawe all malcontents, and 
countenanced some of the worst rascals at Mankoroane's 
headquarters. In fact, as Rhodes, who from Kimberley 
was keeping an eye on his proceedings, telegraphed to the 
High Commissioner, he seemed to be working for " a split 
on race lines : if true, this certainly means trouble." 

While Mackenzie was acting in this high-handed way 
in Bechuanaland, Rhodes had an opportunity of again 
defining his policy. It was on the introduction of a bill 
for annexing southern Bechuanaland to the Cape by the 
new Prime Minister, Upington. Opinion had thus advanced 
considerably since the preceding year ; now, not only the 
Ministry but the leading members of the late Government 
were in favour of the proposal ; then Rhodes had stood 
almost alone. Again he took a leading part in the debate, 
with the delicate task of steering a middle course between 
those who, like Mackenzie, demanded the intervention of 
the Imperial Government, and the followers of Hofmeyr, 
who wished the country to fall into the hands of the Trans- 
vaal. Turning first to the latter, " Was this House," he 



8o CECIL RHODES 

asked, " prepared to say after the debt we had incurred, 
that we should allow these republics to form a wall across 
our trade route ? The railways had been constructed with 
a view to the trade of the interior. He was not exactly 
a follower of Sir Bartle Frere, who wanted to jump 
immediately to the Zambesi, but he believed that the 
colony would gradually extend in that direction, and that 
the civilization of Africa would be from the colony of the 
Cape of Good Hope. Were we to allow a neighbouring 
state to acquire the whole of the interior ... a state 
which imposed a hostile tariff of 33 per cent against our 
goods ? We must look to the development of the north, 
not only in the interest of the merchants, but also in the 
interest of our farmers. Bechuanaland was the neck of 
the whole territories up to the Zambesi, and we must secure 
it, unless we were prepared to see the whole of the north 
pass out of our hands." He was equally severe on 
Mackenzie and his school. Mackenzie with all his sympathy 
for the natives had little for the whites of South Africa, 
and had already estranged the settlers who had petitioned 
for annexation to the Cape. For this was the true solution ; 
the responsibihty was the Cape's, the chief interest was the 
Cape's, and the Cape alone without interference from the 
Imperial Government could settle the matter amicably 
with the Transvaal. " If the Cape did not act," he con- 
tinued, " the Imperial Government would interfere ; and 
possibly the interference of the Imperial Government 
might lead to a repetition of those unfortunate occurrences 
which they had had in connection with the Transvaal. . . . 
We must not have the Imperial factor in Bechuanaland. 
. . . They should at once negotiate with the Imperial 
Government and with the people of the Transvaal [with a 
view to annexation to the Cape], and foremost they should 
try and remove the Imperial factor from the situation." 

The motion, which was also supported by Scanlen and 
Merriman, was carried ; and Rhodes, the real protagonist, 
leapt into sudden notoriety by his attack on the " Imperial 
factor." He was no great speaker, but he had a happy 
knack of coining phrases, often in the form of blazing 
indiscretions, which curtly expressed a popular opinion. 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 8i 

His claim to dispense with the Imperial factor in the 
situation caught the fancy of Englishmen as well as Dutch- 
men in South Africa, tired of the meddling of Exeter Hall 
and Downing Street. It was received with the same 
rapturous applause as, five years later, the cautious 
Governor's sudden indiscretion in attacking " the amateur 
meddling of irresponsible and ill - advised persons in 
England, which makes every resident in the RepubUcs, 
English as well as Dutch, rejoice in their independence 
and converts many a Colonist from an Imperialist into a 
RepubHcan." Rhodes's phrase meant no more than what 
he expressed in a later speech : " Gentlemen, I have ever 
held one view : i.e. the government of South Africa by the 
people of South Africa, with the Imperial flag for defence " ; 
and so it was understood in South Africa. But in England 
it was regarded as an attack on the Imperial connection 
generally : he was spoken of as a dangerous politician 
prepared to " cut the painter " ; and it was many years 
before he completely Hved down the reputation he had 
acquired in the Enghsh press for disloyalty to the Mother 
Country. 

Less than a fortnight after this speech he was called 
upon to act on his professions. Mackenzie had set the 
whole country by the ears ; and both the Transvaal and 
the Cape Ministry represented that he was a danger to 
peace, Rhodes and a considerable section of the opposition 
agreeing with them. So Robinson recalled him and in 
August sent up, the third agent in succession since March, 
Rhodes himself, with the title of Deputy-Commissioner, to 
try another line. He had no more definite instructions 
than his predecessor, so he framed his own programme. 
He found that Van Niekerk and his party in Stellaland, 
though preferring to come under the Transvaal, were quite 
willing to accept the dominion of the Cape if their land- 
titles were not interfered with ; but that in Goshen Van 
Pittius, a regular swashbuckler, had no intention of coming 
to terms ; on the contrary was preparing fresh attacks on 
Montsioa. " My poUcy, if it can be called one," he there- 
upon telegraphed to Sir Hercules, " is contained in a few 
words, viz. to try and effect a reconciliation with the 

G 



82 CECIL RHODES 

Niekerk party and obtain their co-operation in dealing 
with Rooigrond. ... I know exactly the object I am 
working for ; to stop, if possible, a colUsion between our 
police and the Boers and to prevent a general war^^ which 
must necessitate British troops, and the revival in an 
intensified form of the old race feehngs, which I am still 
in hopes are dying out.'' He first went to see Van Niekerk 
and his chief lieutenant, " Groot " Adriaan De la Rey, a 
huge uncouth Boer from the backveld with a sinister 
reputation for violence. " I shall never forget our meet- 
ing," said Rhodes, describing it some years later. " When 
I spoke to De la Rey, his answer was, ' Blood must flow,' 
to which I remember making the retort : ' No, give me my 
breakfast, and then we can talk about blood.' Well, I 
stayed with him a week. I became godfather to his grand- 
child and we made a settlement." This settlement, ratified 
by Rhodes and Van Niekerk in September, stipulated that 
the settlers should recognize a British protectorate before 
the end of the year, but that they might administer the 
government of Stellaland, subject to the British Commis- 
sioner's approval ; that their land-titles should be recognized, 
and that all Mackenzie's proceedings should be declared 
void. The visit to Rooigrond was not so successful. Here 
he found the Transvaal border Commissioner, General 
Joubert, and characteristically plunged into a discussion 
with him on South African federation over their first 
luncheon. But Van Pit tins was surly and insolent and 
actually pressed forward an attack on Montsioa at Mafe- 
king in Rhodes's presence, an attack in which the British 
agent Bethell was killed. Rhodes was powerless to restrain 
him^ as he had not even an escort with him ; he therefore 
returned forthwith to Stellaland. Montsioa was compelled 
to sign a treaty giving up most of his territory to the 
Goshenites, and much to Rhodes's indignation the treaty 
was confirmed by Joubert. A few weeks later Kruger, 
prompted by Du Toit, the founder of the Bond, who had 
accepted office in the Transvaal, violated the London 
Convention he had recently signed by proclaiming 
Montsioa's territory under his Government's protection. 
This was too much for all but the most bigoted supporters 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 83 

of the Transvaal in Cape Colony and for English public 
opinion. It was felt that this was a good opportunity to 
show Germany as well as the Transvaal that England was 
not yet a negligible factor in South Africa. Lord Derby 
instructed Robinson to make stem representations to 
Kruger ; and resolutions of protest came from all parts 
of the colony. Kruger saw he had gone too far, and 
within a month recalled the obnoxious proclamation. 

Rhodes himself was now one of the first to propose the 
introduction of the Imperial factor. Upington's Ministry, 
dependent on the support of the Bond, were still haggling 
over the terms of annexation with the Home Government 
and it looked as if the country would be lost unless that 
authority stepped in : moreover, a salutary lesson was 
needed to Van Pittius and the Transvaal Government, 
and indirectly to Germany. He therefore urged that an 
expeditionary force should be sent from England to enforce 
the Convention and estabHsh a protectorate over Bechuana- 
land ; and suggested that Sir Charles Warren, whom he had 
known in Griqualand West, should take command. Both 
Sir Hercules and Lord Derby agreed. The expedition was 
sent out with remarkable despatch, and by Christmas 1884 
Sir Charles Warren had 4000 well-equipped troops on the 
borders of Stellaland. Before that a fourth set of emissaries 
from Cape Town, no less than the Prime Minister Upington 
and his Treasurer, Sprigg, had gone to Goshen to attempt 
one more settlement : their settlement practically yielded 
all Van Pittius's demands and was promptly repudiated by 
Robinson ; while Sprigg and Upingtpn were burned in effigy 
at Cape Town. Thus the coast was clear for Warren, 
the fifth within a year to attempt a settlement of the 
Bechuanaland question. 

Warren settled it after a fashion, but not to Rhodes's 
satisfaction and not without creating as much bad blood 
as Mackenzie himself. He began well, shortly after landing 
at Cape Town, by confirming Rhodes's agreement with Van 
Niekerk ; but soon repented of that concession. For he 
evidently came out with the determination to ride rough- 
shod over the country and to make the most of his imposing 
military force. He gave an early taste of his quality by 



84 CECIL RHODES 

insisting that Mackenzie should accompany him as adviser, 
in spite of the High Commissioner's representations that 
Mackenzie was distrusted by the Cape as well as the Trans- 
vaal Governments and had done no good in Stellaland. 
He consented to see Rhodes also, on Robinson's re- 
commendation of him as " clear-headed, honest and quite 
disinterested, as well as fresh from Stellaland," but from 
the outset neglected his advice. 

One of Warren's first acts was to arrange a meeting with 
President Kruger at Fourteen Streams on the Vaal, to 
discuss the beaconing off of the Transvaal border and other 
points of difference. This very meeting was made the 
excuse for an imposing display of mihtary strength, which 
gave great offence. Whereas Kruger came with a few 
artillerymen as a guard of honour, Warren, professing to 
fear a hostile ambush, sent forward two hundred dragoons 
and yeomanry to scour the country beforehand. He also 
came attended by the obnoxious Mackenzie, as well as 
Rhodes. The occasion, however, is chiefly interesting as 
the first meeting between Rhodes and the only opponent 
worthy of his steel that he was destined to encounter. 

Paul Kruger was then sixty, nearly twice Rhodes's age, 
and had memories extending back to the Boers' first move- 
ment of revolt against British domination. As a boy of 
ten he had accompanied his parents on the great trek from 
Cape Colony to the then unknown country beyond the Vaal. 
A rough rude upbringing he had amongst savages and wild 
beasts and was soon depending for his livelihood on his own 
exertions. " I have not had much schooling," he once 
confided to a Bloemfontein audience, " in the ordinary 
acceptation of the term. When I was ten years old I had 
to begin fighting for my life in my country and since then 
I have always been busy with few intervals. That has been 
my only schooling. But I have learned one thing, to dis- 
tinguish friends from foes." One book, however, he did know 
well, his Bible, and from its teaching and the teaching of his 
own experiences had culled his cunning in statecraft and his 
philosophy of life. He knew personally every burgher in his 
republic and had known most of their parents, and among 
them had acquired a legendary reputation for courage and 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 85 

slimness. Tales were told of many a feat : how he had 
hacked off his own thumb when he found it mortifying from a 
wound ; how he went alone to beard a rebel chieftain in his 
kraal with all his savage warriors ; how in one memorable day 
he had started running at dawn, gone home to drink a cup 
of coffee at mid-day and been soundly thrashed there by 
his father for disobedience, then resuming his race had sho^ 
a lion by the way, and finally at sunset had out-distanced 
the fleetest Kaffir runners, against whom he had been 
running for a wager : these were household tales in the 
Transvaal. Added to these his more solid achievements 
in negotiating his country's independence in 1881 and in 
obtaining still better terms for her in the recent London 
Convention account for his wonderful prestige with his 
burghers. He regarded himself more as a prophet than a 
statesman, a prophet chosen by God to guide a chosen 
people into the ways of righteousness and safety. He never 
forgot his early trek, when he had been taught that he and 
his people were fleeing from bondage to the ungodly English ; 
and h^s recent experiences did but confirm his belief that 
his chief duty was to circumvent that ungodly race. Some 
of the ungodly race had already invaded his land, to 
prospect for gold at Barberton in the low veld and the 
De Kaap goldfields in the mountains ; but they had been 
few and comparatively unsuccessful, so did not seem likely 
to bring many more in their train or interfere with his 
burghers' secluded existence : for his strength and his 
trust lay in his country's isolation. It was a broad and 
pleasant land with plenty of healthy high veld for the 
suihmer grazing and of well-watered low veld for the winter 
pastures and the lazy form of agriculture affected by his 
people ; broad enough for every burgher to have his own 
farm - house, remote, as he loved it, from every other 
dwelling-place, and with all the land within sight for his 
own domain. Even so there was a fly in his ointment. 
With all their present elbow-room his Boers never felt 
quite happy without ilHmitable spaces into which to roam 
when the trek fever was upon them. But the south was 
already taken up by their cousins of the Free State, in the 
east the Portuguese and Swaziland cut off their access to 



86 CETCIL RHODES 

the sea, in the north the savage Matabeles forbade further 
access towards the Zambesi, and now in the west the 
ungodly race and that newly arisen adventurer of theirs, 
Rhodes, were seeking to confine them strictly within their 
allotted borders. A stiff-necked old gentleman Kruger 
already was when he first met Rhodes in January 1885, 
and he became more stubborn with increasing age ; im- 
movable in his old traditions and prejudices, giving way 
on details only as a last resort, but never yielding in his 
determination to keep his country inviolate and his people 
untouched by any change in the plan of life which they had 
brought into the country fifty years before. 

In the interview at Fourteen Streams Rhodes was 
over-shadowed by the martial Warren and took little part 
in the proceedings, confining himself to a discussion on 
the land-titles and cattle-thefts in Stellaland and complaints 
of Joubert's conduct at Rooigrond. Kruger in his own 
Memoirs, dictated long afterwards, says that he reproved 
Rhodes for abusing an absent man ; but the statement of 
Mackenzie, who had no love for Rhodes, seems more 
probable, that the President did not seem altogether dis- 
pleased at the attack on his own rival for the presidency. 
Rhodes at least went away from this first interview with 
a great respect for the sturdy old President. If he was a 
fanatic on the subject of his own country, well, so was 
Rhodes himself on England's mission to civilize the rest of 
the world. He spoke of him afterwards as " one of the 
most remarkable men in South Africa," and expressed a 
fellow-feeling for " that extraordinary man," whose one 
dream, when he had not a sixpence in his treasury, was 
the same as his own, " to extend his country over the 
whole of the northern interior." He certainly reahzed 
now and henceforward that he was an opponent to be 
dealt with warily. Kruger, on his side, returned the 
compliment by admitting the capacity of his youthful 
antagonist to make himself unpleasant : it was not for 
nothing that he had " learned one thing, to distinguish 
friends from foes " ; and he is reported to have said to 
his friends : " That yoimg man will cause me trouble if 
he does not leave pohtics alone and turn to something 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 87 

else. Well, the race-horse is swifter than the ox, but the 
ox can draw the greater loads. We shall see.'' 

It became apparent by this interview that no further 
danger was to be apprehended from the Transvaal. But 
both Rhodes and Warren were still nervous about Germany's 
intentions, and were supported by the Home Government and 
the Cape in their determination to prove England's intention 
of retaining the corridor to the interior through Bechuana- 
land.i But the two men differed fimdamentally as to 
method. Rhodes's idea was to secure the co-operation of 
Van Niekerk and the Stellaland burghers, avoid all further 
friction with the Dutch, and make it easy for the Bond 
party to agree to annexation by the Cape of the southern 
part of Bechuanaland, with a loose Imperial protectorate 
of the northern part : in this way the Cape colonists, who 
were chiefly concerned, would have an interest in main- 
taining the open door to the interior. Warren for his part, 
influenced by Mackenzie, was opposed to extending the 
Cape borders : he desired to establish the Imperial authority 
throughout Bechuanaland, and by his provocative conduct 
succeeded in making it impossible for any Cape Ministry 
to assume responsibility for any part of the country. 
Rhodes was plainly given to understand that his occupation 
as Deputy-Commissioner was gone. His advice was un- 
heeded and he was left with nothing to do but to sit in his 
hut at headquarters and discuss with young Currey and 
Ralph Wilhams, a friend on Warren's staff, day-dreams 
about the advance of British power to the great Central 
Lakes and the confusion of Germany. Finally, after a 
month of this, when Warren disowned Rhodes's arrange- 
ment with Kruger's Attorney-General about compensation 
for cattle-thefts, repudiated his agreement with Van Niekerk 
about the status of Stellaland and the recognition of land- 
titles, an agreement which he himself had confirmed at 
Cape Town, and even arrested Van Niekerk on an utterly 
untenable charge of murder, Rhodes felt himself in honour 
bound to resign and leave the country. Warren, after a 

^ Germany had expressed some alarm at Warren's expedition, but 
had been reassured by Granville, who disclaimed any intention of interfer- 
ing with Namaqualand and Damaraland (Transvaal, 1885, C. 4310). 



88 CECIL RHODES 

parting insult to him as a " danger to the peace/' then felt 
free to act as he chose. He proclaimed martial law in 
southern Bechuanaland, visited Land Goshen, whence he 
found that Van Pittius and all his volunteers had fled, and 
then proceeded with his army on progress with Mackenzie 
through northern Bechuanaland. Here he did his best 
to stimulate a native war by accepting from Khama, chief 
of the Bamangwatos, a concession over country which 
really belonged not to Khama but to his neighbour Lo 
Bengula, king of the Matabeles, and to arouse all the bitterest 
feelings of race hatred in South Africa by proposing that 
only settlers of pure British origin, to the exclusion of the 
Dutch, should be admitted into Bechuanaland. In all 
these proceedings he disregarded not only the advice of 
Rhodes and the Cape Ministry, whom he insulted, but alsa- 
the High Commissioner himself. In August 1885 he was 
hastily recalled ; but the harm was then done. In one 
respect his mission had been successful, in making plain 
both to the Transvaal and to Germany that England had 
no intention of abdicating her position as the paramount 
power in South Africa. But he had made co-operation 
with the Cape impossible for the time being. The Dutch 
party, after seeing the Governor ignored, the Rhodes agree- 
ment with Van Niekerk repudiated, and Mackenzie allowed 
to dictate an anti-Dutch policy, washed their hands of the 
whole business. The Cape Government, dependent on the 
Dutch, refused to relieve the Imperial Government of any 
part of its burden in Bechuanaland ; consequently in 
September it was decided to establish Crown Colony 
government over the country as far north as the Molopo 
River, so as to include Montsioa's and Mankoroane's terri- 
tory, as well as Stellaland and Goshen. The Crown Colony 
was given the name of British Bechuanaland, to distinguish 
it from the Protectorate estabhshed over the northern part 
up to Lo Bengula 's borders. 

When the Cape Parhament met in June Rhodes took 
occasion to express the bitter humiUation he felt, as an 
Englishman, at Warren's proceedings. " I remember," he 
said, " when a youngster, reading in my Enghsh history 
of the supremacy of my country and its annexations and 



THE FIRST STEP NORTHWARDS 89 

that there were two cardinal axioms : that the word of 
the nation when once pledged was never broken, and that 
when a man accepted the citizenship of the British Empire, 
there was no distinction of races. It has been my mis- 
fortune in one year to meet with the breach of the one 
and the proposed breach of the other. The result will be 
that when the troops are gone we shall have to deal with 
sullen feeling, discontent and hostility. . . . The breach of 
solemn pledges and the introduction of race distinctions 
must result in bringing calamity on this country, and if 
such a poHcy is pursued it will endanger the whole of our 
social relationships with colonists of Dutch descent and 
endanger the supremacy of Her Majesty in this country." 

He was naturally sore for pubhc and personal reasons 
at the outcome of his endeavours.^ He had been personally 
insulted by Warren and practically driven out of the 
country ; and he had seen all his efforts to draw English 
and Dutch together for the first step northwards made 
unavailing ; while in return he had only reaped abuse 
and insinuations from his fellow-countrymen for daring to 
say a good word for the Dutch. But he could at least 
have consoled himself with the reflection that his exertions 
and his influence had played no small part in the Imperial 
Government's decision to checkmate any designs by the 
Transvaal or Germany on Bechuanaland ; and within ten 
years he was to persuade the Cape to annex the Crown 
Colony with the Crown's full consent. Above all his efforts 
to unite Dutch and English in one policy, though unsuccess- 
ful for the moment, stood him in good stead afterwards, for 
they were not forgotten. It was felt that he was justified 
when he said in the same speech in which he attacked 
Warren : "I can at least appeal to the House from the fact 
that I have for the last three years been trying to deal with 
the question, not with the idea of stirring up difficulties 
with neighbouring South African states, not with any 
desire to embroil ourselves with colonists of Dutch descent, 

^ For his work as Deputy-Commissioner Rhodes was offered some small 
decoration. This he refused, but said he would appreciate a formal letter 
of thanks from the Secretary of State. Such a request was unprecedented 
and caused some fluttering in the Colonial Office dove-cotes ; however, it was 
eventually sent. 



90 CECIL RHODES 

but with a real feeling that in Bechuanaland Ues the future 
of South Africa, and that with our right dealing with this 
question will depend the union in the future of South 
Africa." i 

* The controversy between Rhodes and Warren died hard. In 1885 
(Sir) Ralph WilUams pubUshed The British Lion in Bechuanaland, defend- 
ing Rhodes and attacking Warren and Mackenzie. Both sides of the 
dispute were put forward in the " Transvaal " bluebooks of the same year, 
Warren's by himself and Rhodes's, with evident approbation, by Sir 
Hercules Robinson. Austral Africa, a long-winded pamphlet in two 
volumes, appeared from Mackenzie's pen in 1887, in defence of Warren 
and himself, and against Rhodes and Sir Hercules. The two main 
disputants also engaged in a long controversy in The Times during 
November and December 1885. Rhodes's letter, which opens the ball 
on November 11, probably constitutes a record for length in the corre- 
spondence columns of that paper, for it occupies close on four columns 
of small print. On November 17 and 26 Warren rejoins in large print. 
On December 2 Rhodes comes out with another letter nearly two columns 
in length (small print again) ; on December 14 Warren concludes with a 
final letter in large print. The comparative value then attached by The 
Times to the two men, by the fount assigned to their letters, is interesting. 

For his first letter Rhodes had gone to an hotel in Chester, where he 
thought he should be quiet, and he was helped to concoct it by his friend 
Ralph Williams : the finished production was then shown to Mr. R. 
Maguire for further suggestions. According to Sir R. Williams, he was 
the scribe, while Rhodes stalked up and down the room without a coat, 
rubbing his hands together or ruffling his hair and ejaculating suggestions 
which Williams would put into consecutive English. At intervals Rhodes 
would call a halt, " to look at it from Warren's point of view," and state 
what he imagined to be Warren's case, in order to be certain that his 
own arguments covered the whole ground. 



CHAPTER IX 

GOLD AND DIAMONDS 

" Put money in thy purse. . . . Put money in thy purse. 
. . . Make all the money thou canst " : this seems to have 
been the chief lesson learned by Rhodes after the compara- 
tive failure of his first great adventure in politics. He had 
tried the Cape Government, he had tried the Imperial 
factor, and they had both failed him, or at any rate he 
had not got what he wanted done as he wanted. For the 
future he felt that he must take his own course. Most 
men with original ideas have had to make a similar resolu- 
tion and have sought to attain their objects by their 
eloquence in the Senate, by conquests on the battlefield, 
or by their power of imparting sparks from their own 
burning convictions to their fellows. Rhodes did not 
neglect these means, but he was singular in this that he 
attached enormous importance to the influence of wealth 
in securing public objects. If one has ideas, as he told 
General Gordon, one cannot carry them out without wealth 
to back them : "I have therefore tried," he added in 
narrating this incident, to combine the commercial with 
the imaginative.'* He did not, as so many others have 
done, regard wealth as an end m itself, but as a preliminary 
to success he believed it to be essential, and was unflinching 
in putting his theory into practice. For three years after 
the Bechuanaland episode he gave himself up almost 
entirely to the pursuit of wealth. He kept in touch with 
politics, but only took part in them incidentally when a 
question directly affecting his interests cropped up : on 
his main conception of a further advance northwards he 

91 



92 CECIL RHODES 

was biding his time silently till the day when he could 
come forward to crush all opposition by his financial power. 



During the five years that he had been devoting his 
energies chiefly to affairs of state in Basutoland and 
Bechuanaland or at Cape Town, he had not lost sight of 
his De Beers Mining Company. Since its incorporation in 
1880 with a capital of only £200,000 it had prospered 
exceedingly, largely owing to the vigilance of Rhodes 
himself, who was secretary of the Company till 1883 and 
then chairman. He was always on the look out for 
improved and more economical methods of working. In 
the middle of his election campaign he writes to his friend 
Rudd that " the expenses are simply damnable " and that 
the extravagance of the new engineer must be curbed, and 
two years later is quite ready to have a committee of the 
directors to consider further economies. He also seized 
every opportunity of buying up and incorporating other 
claims and companies. By 1885 the De Beers Company 
was already the chief owner in that mine, and its capital 
had increased from the original £200,000 to £841,550. 
But this was not enough : he was determined to clear out 
all rivals and make his company the sole proprietor of his 
** nice Httle mine." Before starting operations at Kim- 
berley, and soon after his final fling at Warren in the Cape 
Parliament, he went home to England to raise funds and 
conciliate interests and then returned to devote himself to 
the process of amalgamation. 

But if Rhodes was bent on amalgamation at De Beers, 
so were others in the other mines. In fact a closer amal- 
gamation of interests had become a necessity if the diamond 
industry was to survive at all. Owing to the conditions 
of mining at Kimberley, the small digger of the early days, 
content to work for what he could find on one claim or 
even a quarter or an eighth of a claim 31 feet by 31 feet, 
had long found it impossible to make a living. The cost of 
pumping out the water from the mines had been the first 
serious tax on these men's resources and had driven most of 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 93 

them away : their, claims had been bought up by various 
companies, but in their turn only the strongest of the com- 
panies could survive the next and more serious disaster to 
the industry. The reef, which formed a casing round the 
" yellow " and " blue " ground, began gradually to fall 
in, as its support was cut away, and finally, early in the 
'eighties, millions of cubic feet of reef collapsed, burying 
in some mines half the diamond claims that were being 
worked. Futile efforts by mining boards and the richer 
companies were at first made to remove the reef and expose 
the claims again, but that was soon found to be a hopeless 
method : the only resource left, and that an expensive 
one, was to sink shafts beneath the fallen reef and start 
underground mining on the buried claims. These success- 
ive calamities, the increased cost of production, and the 
reduction in the price of diamonds had been hastening on 
in the other mines the same process of amalgamation to 
which Rhodes was devoting himself at De Beers ; for only 
the strongest companies found it possible to survive. Thus 
by the end of 1885 the original 3600 claims, into which the 
four Kimberley mines had been divided, had all been 
concentrated into the hands of ninety-eight owners ; of 
these, there were thirty and thirty-seven respectively in 
the Bultfontein and Dutoitspan, which had hitherto suffered 
least from landslides, but only ten in De Beers, and nine- 
teen in the Kimberley Mine, the original New Rush, 
where Rhodes had worked his first claim. But even this 
reduction in the number of claim-holders did not solve 
all difficulties. There was still a great deal of waste 
involved in the attempt by ninety-eight separate owners 
to exploit an area of only seventy acres in the aggregate ; 
and the new system of underground working introduced 
another element of confusion. Instead of one main shaft 
for each mine, each company had to have its own, and the 
tunnelling gave rise to constant disputes about encroach- 
ments between rival claim-holders. Barnato afterwards 
described the resulting confusion at De Beers. " Why," 
he asked, " was the underground system not a success in 
this case ? Because one company was working against 
another ; that is to say, if one company was on the five 



94 CECIL RHODES 

hundred feet level, the opposing company could go and 
eat into each other's boundary walls and pillars to such a 
dangerous extent that the entire mine was in a condition 
which threatened collapse at any moment." Similar con- 
siderations in the other mines were making the need of 
amalgamation self-evident. 

Rhodes, however, was the first to succeed. By 1887 
he had bought up all the remaining claims at De Beers 
and thus made his company the sole owner of the mine. 
This amalgamation of interests helped him considerably in 
cutting the costs of working. He chose his engineers and 
officials well, and could afford to pay them good salaries, 
finding his profit in this poHcy. They introduced the best 
engines and labour-saving appUances, which amply repaid 
the heavy initial outlay. Between 1882 and 1888 the cost 
of winning a carat had been reduced from i6s. 6d. to 7s. 2d., 
while the reserve of " blue " on the drying grounds had 
increased from 3000 to 300,000 loads. Great savings, too, 
had been effected by the introduction, largely on Rhodes's 
initiative, of compounds for the native workers. Hitherto 
it had been very difficult to prevent thefts of diamonds 
by these natives, who abstracted them from the workings 
and secretly sold them to iUicit diamond buyers (I.D.B.) : 
in one year alone, it was estimated, claim-holders had lost 
diamonds to the value of £725,000 by these thefts. But 
when the natives were confined, during the whole of their 
term of service, in compounds, they could be properly 
watched and searched and had no means of communicating 
with unHcensed dealers ; thus by this system the losses by 
thefts became almost neghgible. These compounds were 
also of advantage to the natives themselves, for they were 
well cared for in them, well fed at a low cost, and prevented 
from touching liquor, on which they used previously to 
waste most of their earnings. Thus in spite of the great 
reduction in the price of diamonds from 30s. to i8s. 5jd. 
per carat within six years and the great increase in capital 
by all the accretions of claims and companies, the De Beers 
Mining Company, which had paid only 3 per cent on the 
original £200,000 in 1882, in 1888 paid 25 per cent on a 
capital of no less than £2,332,170. 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 95 

Meanwhile Bamato, at the Kimberley Mine, had been 
pursuing much the same poHcy. He also had been acquir- 
ing all the claims he could lay his hands on, and by the 
time Rhodes had amalgamated the De Beers Mine had 
made his own Central Company the strongest in the 
Kimberley Mine. But he still had some competitors, the 
most considerable of which was the French Company ; in 
time he had hopes of absorbing that and then he would be 
in a better position than Rhodes, for his mine was the most 
productive and the richest on the Diamond Fields. Rhodes 
saw the danger. It was brought home to him in this way. 
In 1887 he sunk a shaft in his mine, whereby 2500 loads a 
day could be raised and the total output of the mine had 
increased to 1,000,000 carats a year : at the same time 
he found that the Kimberley Mine could do as well if not 
better, for in an incredibly short time the Central Company 
had sunk a similar shaft, and another company in the same 
mine was following its example. Already, owing to over- 
production, the price of diamonds had sunk and was still 
sinking ; if it came to a cut-throat competition between the 
two mines, profits would disappear altogether, and then the 
weaker mine would have to succumb. Now Rhodes used 
to calculate that, taking one year with another, young 
men engaged to be married and others were prepared to 
spend £4,000,000 a year, no more and no less, in the 
purchase of diamonds for their sweethearts and wives : if 
the price of diamonds was high, they bought fewer stones, 
if low, they bought more, but never, on an average, more 
than were worth the £4,000,000. The problem to his 
mind, therefore, was how to limit the annual output of 
diamonds for the market that the £4,000,000 they fetched 
should show a clear profit to the diamond mining companies : 
the amalgamation of interests in one mine only was no 
remedy for this state of things as long as there were rival 
companies elsewhere. The only solution he saw was to 
amalgamate all the diamond mines under one control, and 
so regulate production and prices to suit the interests of 
the industry. Others before him, his friend Merriman 
for one, had conceived this idea of one gigantic 
diamond corporation, but had failed to bring it off. 



96 CECIL RHODES 

But this did not daunt Rhodes, he remembered the 
Umkomanzi valley and the cotton : so he resolved to make 
one more attempt. This resolution brought him into direct 
antagonism with Barney Bamato. 

Before 1887 there had been no such rivalry ; each had 
been too busy looking after his own mine. But on this 
question of fixing prices and eliminating competition the 
two kings of the diamond industry took diametrically 
opposite views. Rhodes's idea of a huge corporation, of 
which he would naturally be the guiding spirit, to control 
the four mines and regulate prices, did not suit Barnato at 
all. He was equally convinced that over-production must 
be checked, but he proposed to secure that end either by 
a working agreement between equals, or by breaking all 
his competitors, including De Beers, and so making the 
Kimberley Mine supreme. On one thing he was quite 
determined, not to allow his holdings to be sunk in the 
gulf of De Beers : and, if it came to a fight, he was quite 
prepared for it, for he had an immense belief in the 
Kimberley Mine as capable of producing diamonds of 
better quality, in larger numbers, and more cheaply than 
De Beers. When, therefore, in May 1887 Rhodes opened 
the offensive, he readily took Up the challenge. 

The two champions in the great contest for the autocracy 
of the Diamond Fields were fairly matched. If anything, 
the opinion of Kimberley inclined slightly in favour of 
Barnato's chances. Both were rich ; Rhodes told a friend 
in 1885 that he was worth about £50,000 a year, but Barnato 
was richer and seemed the more adventurous of the two. 
Besides his large holding in his own mine, he had spread 
his net over every other undertaking in Kimberley which 
seemed to him at all promising. His London house, 
Barnato Brothers, gave him a footing in the city and 
enabled him to float and finance new companies more 
readily than Rhodes ; and as a buyer he was in close touch 
with the diamond market. One characteristic the two 
men had in common, a knowledge of the diamond mines 
unrivalled in the fields : in other respects the contrast 
between the two men was striking. Even in their method 
of acquiring this knowledge the contrast was apparent. 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 97 

Rhodes, slow and methodical, trusted mainly to his 
own great power of observation and his familiarity with 
every practical detail of the Kimberley workings, but 
he did not disdain the learning of others. " Please send 
me all books deaHng with the custom of other countries, 
especially colonies, as to minerals. . . . the Colonial Insti- 
tute might help you. . . . Please attend to this ; you know 
exactly what I require," he writes to Rudd on the eve of 
his election ; and, though not normally a great reader, 
when he wanted to get up a subject he read voraciously 
and had a retentive memory for what he noted as valuable. 
Bamato, on the other hand, never read books and only 
occasionally skimmed newspapers, finding it, as he said, 
" cheaper to pay a man to pick out what I want than 
to waste time myself in looking for it " ; but he made up 
for this by his extraordinary nimbleness of mind. Unlike 
Rhodes, who was reserved and difficult of approach except 
to his intimates, Bamato was like a piece of quicksilver, 
darting about with irrepressible good humour in bars and 
on racecourses, at the street comer or on the boards of 
the theatre, where he was the most popular amateur actor 
of Kimberley, never taking a rebuff, but always with an 
eye to business and ready to pick up any hint that would 
put him on the track of a " good thing." His wild specula- 
tions were a byword, but they were not so wild as they 
appeared ; for his rashness was always tempered with a 
strong element of Jewish caution. As in his first venture, 
so always, he was ready to stake his last guinea, but always 
with the expectation that it would bring him in thirty 
shillings. Indeed his quickness and acumen in financial 
calculations amounted to genius : he boasted, and with 
reason, that he had never engaged in a speculation which 
proved a failure. 

But against Bamato's brilliant gifts and his rapid 
success Rhodes had certain sohd advantages. Bamato's 
was in a sense a bubble reputation, depending solely on 
his financial acimien : had this failed him, he would have 
sunk, hardly regretted. Though admired, he was not 
respected in Kimberley, where strange stories, probably 
untrue, were hinted about the origin of his wealth : at any 

H 



98 CECIL RHODES 

rate, owing perhaps to his inveterate habit of combining 
business with pleasure, he could not obtain admission to 
the not very exclusive Kimberley Club. But Rhodes was 
respected even where he was not liked. He always had a 
purpose, which he pursued with persistence, sometimes 
even with ruthlessness ; for he was not tender with those 
who came across his path and he rarely forgot an injury ; ^ 
thus he was a dangerous enemy. On the other hand, and 
in this lay his principal strength, he was noted for straight- 
forward deahng. In a community where crooked and 
underhand methods were not uncommon, Rhodes, taking 
a leaf from the English diplomatist's notebook, always 
played with his cards on the table : "I find in Ufe it is far 
better to tell the town-crier exactly what you are going to 
do and then you have no trouble, *' he once declared in a 
telegram to Beit. When he dealt with a man he told him 
frankly what he wanted and what he was prepared to give, 
and he was never a defaulter. Besides the respect of the 
community, he had firm friends, who loved him for himself 
alone and would have stuck to him had all his financial 
schemes gone awry. They loved him for a bo5dsh and uncalcu- 
lating enthusiasm for better things than money-making, the 
kind of enthusiasm which led him, while on a visit to London 
in 1885, impetuously to jump into a hansom and drive to 
HoUoway Gaol, just to see Stead. " Here is the man I 
want," he exclaimed, when he heard of Stead's imprison- 
ment for the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon, " one who 
has not only the right principles, but is more anxious to 
promote them than to save his own skin " ; and being 
denied admission to the prison, he went to Exeter Hall, 
for the first and only time in his fife, to protest against the 
treatment given to Stead. Then, apart altogether from 
his position at Kimberley, he had already gained a stand- 
ing by his political work, at home as well as in South 
Africa ; and this was useful even in financial transactions. 
During that same visit to England he found himself no 
longer the "cypher" that Lord Randolph Churchill had 

^ He long retained a curious prejudice against banks and bankers, 
because he had not found them accommodating when he was struggling 
for funds. 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 99 

spoken of only the year before. His speech about the 
" Imperial factor " had given him notoriety and his action 
in Bechuanaland had fixed the more serious attention of 
persons interested in South Africa ; even The Times had 
opened its columns to him. His Oxford friends brought 
him forward, and, at the suggestion of one of them, the 
Conservative Whips asked him to stand as a candidate 
for Bristol, an offer which he refused, partly because he was 
not sure that he was a Conservative, partly because he felt 
that his work lay in South Africa. In this decision Rhodes 
was undoubtedly right. His genius for financial organisa- 
tion, for which Kimberley and Johannesburg gave him full 
scope, would have been comparatively wasted in England ; 
as for his bluff methods and crude ideas of statesmanship, 
they were more suited to a new country, where problems 
and politics are simpler, than to the compHcated machinery 
of European affairs.^ 

Bamato had a weak spot in his armour, the presence of 
rivals in the Kimberley mine itself ; and Rhodes was quick 
to take advantage of this weakness. His policy was to 
obtain such a control over the Kimberley Mine that 
Bamato, no longer master in his own house, would have 
to yield at discretion. His first move, in May 1887, was to 
bid for a large block of claims in the Kimberley Mine 
known as W. A. Hall's, but in this he failed, being overbid 
by a syndicate headed by Sir Donald Currie, who also had 
schemes of his own for amalgamation. Thereupon he sent 
off two friends to join the ship which was carrying Sir 
Donald home, in the hope of persuading him to re-sell. Sir 
Donald, haK-tempted by Rhodes' s offer, called at Lisbon 
to learn the market value of the shares, and, finding it 
was higher than Rhodes's price, turned on the emissaries : 
" You young thieves, had I listened to you, I should have 
sold at a loss," and would have nothing more to say to 
them. But they had also taken advantage of the call at 
Lisbon to telegraph Currie's decision to Rhodes, who 
thereupon beared the market so successfully that when the 

^ Sir Charles Dilke said of him acutely that " he had none of the 
knowledge or the mode of concealing want of knowledge, one or other 
of which is required for English public work," 



•*... 



100 CECIL RHODES 

ship reached Plymouth Currie's shares were no longer 
worth what Rhodes had offered. Currie had his lesson : 
he recognized that he had come up against an antagonist 
whom it would be dangerous to cross and dropped out of 
the competition. Rhodes then flew at higher game. His 
plan was no less than to buy up the French Company, 
Bamato's chief rivals in the mine, lock, stock and barrel. 
For this ambitious project he required more capital than he 
could himself command, so in July he sailed for England 
to see if help was to be had from the Rothschilds. Mr. 
Gardner Williams, the new general manager of De Beers, 
had connections with that firm, and when Rhodes came to 
discuss the matter with Lord Rothschild, he found him 
favourably disposed ; indeed so good an impression did 
Rhodes make on this pillar of British credit, that for the 
rest of his career Lord Rothschild remained his friend and 
a staunch if sometimes puzzled and anxious ally. If, 
said the cautious financier, as they parted, the French 
Company were willing to sell, the firm would " see if they 
could raise " the £1,000,000 required. This was good 
enough for Rhodes, who that same evening went off to Paris 
to negotiate with the French directors. Their price was 
£1,400,000. To meet this Rhodes took up a loan of £750,000 
from Rothschilds, and issued 50,000 De Beers shares at 
£15 through a Hamburg syndicate, on the understanding 
that De Beers and the syndicate should share equally in 
any profit from the rise in value of these shares. As they 
soon rose to £22, each party made the handsome profit of 
£100,000 on the transaction. 

So far all had gone well, but Bamato was not the man 
to allow such an invasion of his mine without a fight. The 
agreement with the directors of the French Company had 
still to be confirmed by the shareholders, and before the 
general meeting Barnato had bettered Rhodes's offer by 
£300,000. Then came Rhodes's most surprising move in 
the game. To all appearance he retired from the contest, 
went to Barnato and said it would be a pity to waste money 
in cutting one another's throats, and offered to let him 
have the French Company for the price he had himself 
agreed to pay for it : nor did he require cash ; all he asked 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS loi 

was the equivalent of the purchase price in newly-issued 
shares of Bamato's Kimberley Central. Barnato, delighted, 
closed with the offer, perhaps not seeing the trap into which 
he was falHng, or, more probably, confident that his control 
of his own mine would remain unimpaired. There he 
miscalculated : though the shares in the Kimberley Central 
to be handed to his rival amounted to only one-fifth of the 
increased capital, this fifth gave Rhodes the footing he 
required in the mine ; and once established in a position 
he was a difficult man to budge. 

For the moment, however, the victory appeared to be 
Bamato's. He was still able to out-vote Rhodes at the 
Kimberley Central, and he never relaxed his policy of 
crushing the competition of De Beers. He went on produc- 
ing diamonds at a greater rate than his rival and put them 
on the market at such a price that it hardly covered the 
cost of working. Rhodes then realized there was nothing 
for it but war to the knife : " We saw this," he told his 
De Beers shareholders, " that you could never deal with 
obstinate people until you get the whip-hand of them, 
and that the only thing we had to do to secure the success 
of our industry was to get the control of the Kimberley 
Mine." To do this, however, some £2,000,000 was required 
and he anxiously inquired of his friend Beit where the 
money was to come from. " Oh," answered Beit, no less 
eager than himself, " we shall get the money, if we can 
only get the shares " ; and the money somehow was forth- 
coming. Then began a rare game of beggar-my-neighbour. 
Rhodes, supported by Beit, bought Kimberley Central 
shares right and left, with the natural result of forcing 
up the price. Barnato in his turn bought up shares with 
equal recklessness, and prices soared still higher with the 
competition. Barnato did not mind, for he was convinced 
his mine was worth two of De Beers, and he still went on 
buying. So did De Beers, and prices leapt up further. 
But then Barnato found that he had traitors in the camp. 
While Rhodes's supporters generally stuck to their shares,^ 

^ This was not universally the case. The ctory goes that Beit, who 
had been buying Kimberley shares recklessly, went in some trepidation 
to confess himself to Wernher, the cautious head of the firm. " Oh, 



102 CECIL RHODES 

many of Bamato's shareholders, tempted by the huge 
profits, parted with theirs. At last, when diamonds were 
selling almost at a loss and Central shares were fetching 
a higher price than even Barnato thought them worth, he 
saw that the game was up. He had fought well and 
gallantly and, when he saw himself beaten, surrendered 
in a generous spirit. In March 1888 he loyally accepted 
terms which gave Rhodes complete control of the Kimber- 
ley Mine : he himself gave up Central in exchange for De 
Beers shares, and the De Beers holding in Kimberley 
Centrals was raised to 11,000 out of a total of 17,000 shares. 
After this settlement the two rivals exchanged courtesies. 
At Barnato's request Rhodes took him to lunch at the 
Kimberley Club, which he had never before entered, and 
then, turning to him, said, " Well, you've had your whim ; 
I should like to have mine, which you alone in Kimberley 
can satisfy. I have always wanted to see a bucketful of 
diamonds ; will you produce one ? " Barnato, much 
flattered, shovelled all his available diamonds into a bucket, 
into which Rhodes plunged his hands, lifted out handfuls 
of the glittering gems and luxuriously let them stream back 
through his fingers like water. 

Rhodes could be ruthless and unscrupulous for an 
object, but no doubt he excused the means to himself by 
the importance he attached to the object. As soon as he 
had secured his victory for amalgamation, he reverted, 
in the deed of association, to his underlying purpose 
of securing means to carry out his Imperial policy. A 
corporation entitled the De Beers Consolidated Mines 
was formed with the modest capital of £100,000 in £5 
shares. All these shares, except twenty-five, were held by 
four men, Rhodes, Barnato, Beit, and Philipson Stow, who 
constituted themselves Ufe-govemors of the Corporation 
and reserved to themselves the power of issuing further 
shares, to be exchanged in the first instance for those of 
the Old De Beers Company and of the Kimberley Central 
on amalgamation. But the critical meeting to decide on 
the terms of the Corporation's trust deed was put off by 

that's all right," said Wernher, " I found the firm was getting more 
Kimberley shares than I liked, so I have sold a lot at excellent prices." 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 103 

Rhodes from time to time, while he gave up everything to 
watch by the bedside of his dearest friend, Pickering, who 
lay dying. On this trust deed all depended, for with it 
he designed to forge the instrument for his poHtical ends. 
At last the meeting was held in Jameson's httle cottage at 
Kimberley, the parties present being Rhodes and Beit on 
the one side, and on the other Bamato and his nephew 
Woolf Joel. Barnato wanted a company concerned solely 
with diamonds, Rhodes a company so constituted that its 
profits could be devoted to his scheme of northern expan- 
sion or other projects for the benefit of the Empire. All 
day they argued and through the night, Rhodes bringing 
out his maps and discoursing on his plans, Beit alone 
showing sympathy, Bamato and Joel caring only for 
the strictly business aspect and left cold by Rhodes's 
enthusiasm. At last, as the light of dawn was beginning 
to show, wearied and overborne by his persistence, influenced 
too, maybe, by Rhodes's cynical promise that he should 
become member for Kimberley, Bamato yielded. " Some 
people," he said with a shrug, " have a fancy for one thing, 
some for another. You want the means to go north, if 
possible, so I suppose we must give it you." No wonder 
Bamato used in after days to avoid meeting Rhodes when 
he differed from him, " for," he declared, " when you have 
been with him half an hour you not only agree with him, 
-but come to believe you have always held his opinion. 
. . . No one else in the world could have induced me to go 
into this partnership. But Rhodes has an extraordinary 
ascendancy over men : he tied me up, as he ties up every- 
body. It is his way. You can't resist him : you must be 
with him." 

How different the new trust deed was from the pro- 
spectus of an ordinary company and how wide - spread 
were its objects became apparent from a singular law-suit 
caused by its provisions. At the general meeting of the 
Kimberley Central Company, held to ratify the amalgama- 
tion with De Beers, an overwhelming majority were 
for the agreement. But a few shareholders stood out and 
brought an action to prevent amalgamation on the ground 
that under their deed of association they could only unite 



104 CECIL RHODES 

with " a similar company/' Their counsel had light work 
in showing that the De Beers Consolidated Mines was not 
" similar " to the Central Company, of which the sole 
business was " to dig for diamonds in the Kimberley 
Mine," whereas the new corporation could " take steps for 
the good government of any territory . . . they would be 
empowered to annex a portion of territory in Central Africa, 
raise and maintain a standing army and undertake warUke 
operations ** ; and he compared its powers with those of 
the old East India Company. The Court took the same 
view and declared for the recalcitrant shareholders. 
" Diamond mining," said Sir Henry de Villiers in delivering 
judgement, " forms an insignificant portion of the powers 
which may be exercised by the Company. The Company 
can undertake financial obligations for foreign governments, 
and may carry on diamond mining, coal mining or gold 
mining in any part of the world. It can carry on banking 
in Africa or elsewhere, and can become a water-company 
in this colony or elsewhere. . . . The powers of the 
Company are as extensive as those of any Company that 
ever existed." 

This judgement did not seriously interfere with Rhodes's 
plans. Acting on a hint conveyed by the judge, he and 
Barnato used their majority in the Kimberley Central 
Company to put it into liquidation and then bought up 
its assets on behalf of the De Beers Consolidated Mines, 
paying in a cheque for £5,338,650 to the liquidators. Thus 
before the end of 1888 the amalgamation of the two most 
powerful mines in Kimberley was consummated. Dutoits- 
pan and Bultfontein still stood out, but " being poorer 
mines on the margin of cultivation they would have to 
accept our offers," said Rhodes, " or fight us on two grounds, 
larger output and lower rates." The inevitable fall of reef 
occurred in both mines in 1888. Rhodes was lunching at 
the club when one of the chief owners of Bultfontein came 
in to announce the disaster to his mine : the party 
immediately rushed off in a cab to view the scene. For an 
hour Rhodes sat brooding on the edge of the mine, un- 
disturbed by the crowd of sight-seers, and then had his 
proposal for amalgamation ready. De Beers bought up 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 105 

the chief interests in both mines and was able to regulate 
their output by securing a perpetual lease of the workings. 
A new mine, the Wesselton or Premier, discovered in 1891, 
also fell into the clutches of De Beers, in spite of the clamour 
raised at the time that it should be thrown open by the 
Government for small diggers : the Corporation also had 
a large interest in the soUtary Free State Mine at Jagers- 
fontein. Hence imtil the discovery of the other Premier 
Mine, in the Transvaal, after Rhodes's death, his company 
had complete control of all South African diamonds, ninety 
per cent of the whole world's production. 

From the shareholders' point of view this consohdation 
was a great advantage. Competition being aboHshed, 
attention could be concentrated on economy in administra- 
tion and working. Development was chiefly confined to 
the richer mines, and large reserves of " blue " could be 
maintained. Mr. Gardner WilUams, writing in 1902, says 
that four million truck-loads of " blue " are sometimes 
washed in one year alone, a mass which would form a cube 
of 430 feet, higher than St. Paul's, while the diamonds 
extracted from it would be contained in a box two feet 
nine inches square. Working expenses were kept at los. 
a carat and the price of diamonds maintained at 30s., 
by restricting the output and by an agreement between the 
Company and a syndicate of buyers, to whom the whole 
output was allotted. The value of the De Beers properties 
was estimated at £14,500,000 in 1890, but the capital was 
kept down to £3,950,000, the rest being paid for by deben- 
tures. Owing to the conservative system of finance, 
introduced by Rhodes and his colleagues, these debentures 
have been rapidly paid off and a large reserve in Consols 
and other gilt-edged securities built up, without interfering 
with the payment of good dividends to the shareholders. 
The employees of the Company also gained by the 
amalgamation. The 2000 white miners were paid wages 
varying from i6s. 8d. to £1 a day. They were well and 
cheaply housed in the model village of Kenilworth, carefully 
planned by Rhodes, with houses rented at £2 : los. to £5 a 
month, and a club-house, where single men could get their 
meals for 25s. a week ; its streets were planted with avenues 



io6 CECIL RHODES 

of trees, a refreshing sight in that dusty, wind-swept 
country, and the Company kept up a great orchard filled 
with vines and all manner of fruit trees. Rhodes took no 
less interest in the 20,000 natives housed in the De Beers 
compounds : he frequently visited them and looked to 
their comfort ; and he loved to have long gossips with them 
as to their affairs. One Christmas Eve, however, he had 
a more turbulent experience with them : he was suddenly 
summoned to deal with a serious strike in the compound, 
which the managers were unable to quell. In spite of the 
natives' threatening attitude, he parleyed with them for 
an hour, and only called in fifteen poUcemen to arrest the 
ringleaders when every other means of pacification had 
been tried. 

There was, however, another side to amalgamation. 
The business of the private digger, who light-heartedly took 
the sporting chance of a fortune or bankruptcy, was 
extinguished ; even the old tailings, in which finds were 
occasionally made, were successfully claimed by the all- 
absorbing Corporation ; and the hope of open diggings, 
temporarily aroused for the adventurous prospector by the 
discovery of the Wesselton Mine, was soon extinguished 
by the refusal of the Cape ParHament to interfere with the 
De Beers monopoly. Working economies threw many men 
out of their jobs ; the diamond buyer outside the ring 
patronized by the Company had no occupation left ; and 
the shopkeeper lost his most lucrative trade by the ring 
fence established round the compounds and the directors' 
practice of selling all goods direct to their native workmen. 
It is true that after prolonged agitation and a debate in 
the House De Beers was compelled to earmark profits from 
these sales for a fund administered by Rhodes himself in 
the interests of the community, but this brought small 
comfort to the individual tradesmen. Although Kimberley 
has since adjusted itself to the huge monopoly which now 
dominates it, the immediate result of the amalgamation 
was great hardship and distress in the town. Discontent 
led to violence and outrages, encouraged by the Knights of 
Labour, a revolutionary organization, who in their manifesto 
attributed the universal stagnation of business to the 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 107 

" existence and domination of one great Monopoly, one 
giant Corporation, as well as to the overweening greed 
and ambition of one wealthy, overestimated, disappoint- 
ing pohtician." The wealthy, overestimated, disappointing 
politician was Prime Minister at the time of this outburst, 
and the committee appointed to investigate the causes of 
distress in Kimberley suggested no heroic measures of reHef . 
But Rhodes himself personally helped to alleviate the hard- 
ship inevitable in the period of transition and he had a good 
answer to complaints about the monopoly. Without it the 
whole diamond industry would soon have been ruined by 
cut-throat competition, and in this ruin not only the actual 
sufferers but all the Europeans and natives still employed 
by De Beers would have been involved. 

II 

Diamonds alone did not occupy Rhodes's attention 
during the years spent in estabhshing his fortune ; he 
was also one of the pioneers of the gold industry of the 
Witwatersrand, an enterprise which proved as profitable 
and very much easier than his amalgamation at Kimberley. 

Long before the great discovery of reefs on the Wit- 
watersrand in 1886 it had been known, through reports of 
the explorers Baines, Mauch and Hartley, that South 
Africa contained gold. As far back as 1867 an English 
company had been formed to exploit the Tati goldfields 
in Matabeleland, and a few years later the report of gold 
discoveries in the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal had 
led Herbert and Cecil Rhodes thither during their long trek 
northwards. The opening of the Pioneer reef in 1883, and 
later of the Sheba, had brought a rush to the De Kaap 
district, where Barberton was founded in 1885. But this 
district was soon thrown completely into the shade by 
wonderful tales of the wealth to be found on the Witwaters- 
rand, the lofty ridge south of Pretoria, which divides the 
waters of the Vaal flowing south and the Limpopo flowing 
north. Here since 1883 the brothers Struben had been 
carrying on exhaustive experiments, first with the quartz 
rock, then with some peculiar layers of conglomerate 



io8 CECIL RHODES 

occurring at intervals in the rock formation and composed 
of pebbles embedded in a cement matrix, not unlike 
almond rock in appearance, and since famous under the 
name of Banket. For three years the results were dis- 
appointing, but at length, in the spring of 1886, Walker, 
one of the workmen, struck the layer, afterwards known as 
the Main Reef Leader, on the farm Langlaagte. A sample 
of the reef was sent for assay to Kimberley, its extraordinary 
richness in gold was soon bruited abroad and all the 
prominent men of the diamond fields were suddenly seized 
with a gold fever. The first to go were J. B. Robinson, one 
of the pioneers of the old river-diggings, and Hans Sauer, a 
friend of Rhodes ; the regular Barberton coach took them 
only as far as Potchefstroon ; thence they travelled in a 
country cart to the Witwatersrand. On arriving at the 
spot where the city of Johannesburg with its great buildings 
and vast population now stands, the centre of a fine of mine 
chimneys many miles in length, the travellers saw nothing 
but bleak undulating veld with a few Boer home-steads in 
the dips and a small group of prospectors' tents on the ridge. 
But Hans Sauer saw that it was good and returned to fetch 
Rhodes and his partner Rudd ; Alfred Beit and his partner 
Porges, Knight and many others followed. 

The gold-bearing reefs on the Witwatersrand are quite 
pecuhar. Whereas in other parts of South Africa the gold 
occurs in massive beds of quartzite or thin bands of quartz, 
here the best gold is contained in reefs of the Banket 
conglomerate. These reefs are found in layers of varpng 
thickness and at varying distances apart. The Main Reef, 
for example, has six main layers, one of thenr being the 
Main Reef Leader, which vary in thickness from one to 
forty inches : some are only a few inches, others as much 
as eight or nine feet apart. The outcrop of the Main Reef 
is found in a continuous line for thirty miles along the 
summit of the ridge and can be traced at intervals for a 
much longer distance. From their outcrop the reefs dip 
into the ground towards the south at different angles, 
sometimes almost vertically, but, as they extend south- 
wards, the dip invariably becomes flatter. Naturally 
mining operations were first carried on where the outcrop 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 109 

appeared, but had they been confined to this area the 
results would have been comparatively poor : owing, 
however, to this fortunate tendency of the dip to flatten, 
shafts could be sunk at considerable distances from the 
outcrop with a prospect of picking up the reef again for 
deep-level workings. Those, therefore, who were wise in 
the early days took up claims over a considerable distance 
south of the outcrop. Another pecuHarity of the gold 
present in the Banket formation is its close chemical 
association with the cement of the conglomerate, so close 
indeed that it does not readily yield itself to the ordinary 
process of passing the crushed ore over plates coated with 
mercury. But by a fortunate coincidence the remedy for 
this was discovered almost as soon as mining operations 
began. In 1887 the Mc Arthur Forrest process of treating 
taihngs by the cyanide process was perfected ; and thereby 
most of the gold still in solution could be easily extracted. 
Coal, too, an absolute necessity for gold mining, was dis- 
covered in abundance at Boksburg on the Rand itself : had 
it not been so the industry might have been brought to a 
standstill by the prohibitive cost of importing coal from 
overseas or from Cape Colony. Thus Robinson, Rhodes 
and the other pioneers, who beUeved in the marvellous 
wealth to be obtained from the Strubens' discovery, were 
soon justified. Within a year the mining camp had been 
turned into the beginnings of Johannesburg ; and by 1892 
the gold production of South Africa, which was valued at 
less than half a million for the three years 1885-87, had risen 
in value to four and a half millions for one year, all but a 
sixth of it coming from the Witwatersrand. 

But in the early stages considerable faith was needed 
to invest heavily in the Rand, for there was then no 
certainty that the reefs would prove so proHfic. Of the 
optimists Rhodes and Robinson were the foremost : 
Bamato, deterred by an agent's adverse report, hung back. 
Robinson, being first in the field, picked up some of the 
best properties. Between the July when he came up and 
the following November he bought the farms Langlaagte, 
where Walker had struck gold, and Turffontein, where the 
famous Robinson Mine was opened, for £26,000. People 



no CECIL RHODES 

talked derisively of " Robinson's cabbage patch," bought 
at such an extravagant price, but they no longer laughed 
when these same properties were valued at eighteen millions 
and in five years' time had paid over a milUon in dividends 
to the shareholders. Rhodes did not do badly either, 
though, owing to mistaken advice given to him about the 
value of East Rand properties, he missed some good things. 
He and Rudd took their bearings in the August of 1886 ; 
then Rudd went to England to raise capital and Rhodes 
began bu5dng on a large scale in December. " The opinion 
is steadily growing," he writes, " that the Rand is the 
biggest thing the world has seen," owing to its " wonderful 
climate, its faciUties for work and its enormous auriferous 
deposits : [it has] plenty of good things awaiting hard 
work and development." He is constantly josthng up 
with Robinson, Porges, Beit and other speculators ; he 
offers to go shares with Robinson, but Robinson thinks he 
can do better alone ; as he can sometimes. For once, 
while Rhodes was in the orchard trying to bargain in bad 
Dutch with the farmer for his property, Robinson came 
round into the kitchen and bought it out of hand from the 
farmer's wife by his readier arguments in fluent Dutch and 
a display of golden sovereigns. The simple Dutch farmers 
soon began to realize the value of their barren lands and to 
ask prices which made Kruger think the EngUsh purchasers 
were mad. Rhodes had to pay ^f 40,000 in cash and ;f30,ooo 
in scrip to farmer Van Wyk for a block called Botha's 
Reef, of which he had great hopes, and when he wanted 
the farmer to throw in as pit-props some poplar poles he 
saw on the ground, " Ik zal nit verkoopne " (I will not sell 
them) was the only answer he could get. Most of his 
purchases were made on the West Rand, with a few on the 
East ; he also went farther afield and bought gold-bearing 
properties at Klerksdorp and Malmani near the western 
border of the Transvaal. It is perhaps hardly surprising 
that with his sUght experience of gold-mining his judgement 
was sometimes at fault in these purchases : indeed one 
enlightened critic wondered whether " this clever speculator 
had not ventured too much on surface indications." After 
purchase Rudd and he floated companies to work most of 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS iii 

the properties : one of these companies he called after his 
old college, Oriel ; others were the Banket, Botha's Reef, 
May, Aurora, and Witkopje Estate. 

But his principal venture was The Gold Fields of South 
Africa, Limited, founded in 1887 with a capital of £125,000. 
He handed over to it all his gold interests and shares in 
other companies at cost price, reserving, however, for 
himself and Rudd three-fifteenths of the net profits in 
respect of founders' shares, besides two - fifteenths as 
managing directors. The capital was eagerly taken up and 
had been increased to £1,250,000 by 1892, when it was 
renamed The ConsoHdated Gold Fields of South Africa. 
By that time it had given up the direct working of nearly 
all its properties and become a huge share trust company 
in Rand mines, especially deep-levels, to which Rhodes, 
at first incredulous, had become thoroughly converted. 
Its shareholders' interests were guarded by the full control 
it exercised over the gold-mining companies subsidiary 
to it ; and the management, for which Rhodes was largely 
responsible, gave excellent results. In 1892 the dividend 
was 10 per cent, in 1893-94 15 per cent, and in 1894-95 no 
less than 50 per cent. Rhodes himself made enormous profits 
from the Gold Fields : for several years he drew £300,000 
to £400,000 from it annually, and when, in concession to the 
outcry against his percentage rights on founders' shares 
he gave them up, he received in exchange ordinary shares 
valued at £1,300,000 to £1,400,000. Thus he secured his 
own interests ; but he also thought of his wider schemes. 
As in the case of De Beers, so with the Gold Fields, he 
took power by the trust deed to be able to invest in other 
enterprises besides Rand mines, a provision from which he 
derived much support for his political designs. 

During his visits to the Transvaal in 1886 and 1887 
Rhodes had two more meetings with Kruger. Once he 
went on a deputation to the President and made a speech 
representing grievances of the miners : it was apparently 
not a very tactful speech, and at the end Kruger, pointing 
the stem of his pipe towards Rhodes, said in Dutch : " Tell 
him I have heard all these stories before. I am here to 
protect my burghers as well as the Rand people. I know 



112 CECIL RHODES 

what I have to do and I will do what I consider is right.'* 
On the second occasion he proposed Kruger's health at a 
luncheon given to him at Johannesburg. Kruger, in spite 
of the wealth brought into an almost bankrupt country 
by the new adventurers, was by no means happy at their 
sudden invasion in such large numbers. He foresaw the 
danger to the independence of the Transvaal from the 
population of ahens, who would demand rights and 
responsibiUty. Had it rested with him, he would no doubt 
have refrained from proclaiming the goldfields ; but at 
any rate he meant to resist any further demands from the 
strangers. In his difficulty he consulted wise old President 
Brand of the Free State, who advised him to make friends 
with the miners by offering them every possible conces- 
sion : but this was not Kruger's way. His policy, decided 
upon in 1886, was to restrict their power to the utmost, to 
allow them no freehold interest in any land, and to maintain 
the ruling aristocracy of Boer landowners, with himself 
as supreme arbiter. At the luncheon in Johannesburg in 
February 1887 he showed that he fully understood the 
diggers' position, explaining their grievances about the 
gold regulation better than they could themselves, and 
promising certain reforms ; but on the subject of pohtical 
rights he was adamant. Commenting afterwards on the 
newcomers' claim to the franchise, he denied that they 
had any right to it, and continued characteristically : 
" Wealth cannot break laws. Though a man has a milhon 
pounds he cannot alter the law. ... Is it a good man who 
wants to be master of the country, when others have been 
suffering for twenty years to conduct its affairs ? . . . 
It is the unthankful people to whom I have given protection 
that are always dissatisfied, and, what is more, they would 
actually want me to alter my laws to suit them." There 
was sound common sense in Kruger's apprehensions, for 
within a few years the " Uitlanders," as they were called, 
outnumbered his burghers, and it is easy to understand his 
desire to prevent the " cursed EngHsh " regaining pohtical 
control over his beloved country. Rhodes to some extent 
sympathized with Kruger's alarm. In his speech at the 
luncheon he admitted that it could not be a matter of 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 113 

complaint if the Transvaal viewed the new population with 
some suspicion. But Kruger's methods were less prudent 
than his fears were justified. By his obstinate opposition 
even to such reasonable demands as municipal freedom for 
Johannesburg, by his hardly veiled contempt for the Uit- 
landers, and by the encouragement he gave to disreputable 
concession-hunters, of every nationality except the English, 
to make profits from the diggers' needs, he himself helped 
to bring the cataclysm on his country. At any rate there 
was no mistaking his poHcy, for though crafty in his methods 
he was open as to his aims ; and Rhodes at these meetings 
had full warning of the long struggle before him with the 
obstinate old representative of a past order. 



By the enterprises he had thus set going, both at Kim- 
berley and at Johannesburg, during the three years 1885 
to 1888, Rhodes was now master of the financial resources 
he thought necessary for his political aims. How rich 
he actually was it is impossible to tell and, probably, he 
himself hardly knew. He used to keep running accounts 
with various firms, Wernher Beit's principally, but also in 
later days with the Chartered Company, at the Standard 
Bank and elsewhere. These firms used to buy and sell 
shares for him, crediting or debiting him with the balances, 
besides acting for him as paymasters of current accounts, 
and periodically sent him in statements showing his finan- 
cial position. He was constantly changing his investments, 
and had complicated arrangements with many individuals 
and firms as to the division of the proceeds of shares. The 
marvel is that he appears to have had such a good grasp 
of his most important transactions on the money market 
and in company promoting, and a very clear memory of 
his chief commitments. For months he gave public and 
frequent expression to his resentment against a prominent 
financier, who had not allotted him scrip to which he 
thought himself entitled, and he carried on long con- 
troversies with De Beers and the Gold Fields about his 



114 CECIL RHODES 

percentage rights in the profits of those corporations. His 
income was derived principally from those two undertakings. 
He admitted to Labouchere in 1897 that he got between 
three and four hundred thousand a year from the Gold 
Fields. In De Beers he had the profits of two Hfe- 
govemorships, for he had bought out one of the original 
four in 1892 ; and when Barnato died the proceeds of his 
went to the two survivors Rhodes and Beit ; at any rate 
he received close on £200,000 a year from this source. 
From the numerous other companies in which he was 
interested, he must every year, either by dividends or by 
sales of shares at a profit, have obtained enough to bring 
his total income at least up to the million. 

Nor can the value to him of all these undertakings be 
measured only or even principally in money. They also 
gave him enormous and almost uncontrolled power, if he 
chose to use it. At first, when he was in his full vigour, 
he was the absolute dictator of De Beers and the Gold Fields, 
with all their ramifications throughout South Africa, even, 
one may say, throughout the world. He could and did 
make them spend their money on such various objects as 
securing large tracts of Africa for the Empire, promoting 
fruit farms, breeding horses or encouraging education. His 
position at the head of the diamond industry gave him 
even the excuse for interfering in the politics of the United 
States. At the time of the McKinley tariff he appears to 
have kept an agent in America to lobby against excessive 
duties on imported diamonds, and a suggestion was put 
about that diamonds should be admitted free " in return 
for some support of the silver cause in the U.S.A." He 
was also enabled, with more justification, to promote his 
political views in home poHtics by contributions to the 
party chests of the Liberals and the Home Rulers ; and in 
one general election at the Cape he spent very large sums 
on organizing his party. 

The power given to a few men by such a huge 
monopoly as De Beers or such a wealthy corporation 
as the Gold Fields is not good for any country, even when 
the power is wielded by a man with such public-spirited 
views as Rhodes. It tends to destroy public spirit in others. 



GOLD AND DIAMONDS 115 

and to introduce low and mercenary motives for political 
action even in the lifetime of the great man ; and when he 
is gone the canker remains without his alleviating influence. 
Nor was such power an unmixed blessing for Rhodes him- 
self. In his involved transactions in company promoting 
and diamond amalgamation he was forced to add to his 
band of old and tried friends a horde of satelUtes, whose 
fortune he made by judicious hints as to the probable issue 
of his negotiations. Such followers, not too nice in their 
methods, he came to regard as necessary for some of the 
work he had in hand, and though he never respected them 
or gave them the confidence he gave to the true friends, 
and though he always kept a chamber in his mind swept 
and garnished for ideas they could never understand, he 
became insensibly tainted by their constant presence. 

Still, for good or ill, the Great Amalgamator, as he was 
now called, had in these three years won for himself the 
kind of power which he thought essential for his greater 
projects. To these he could now devote himself. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CHARTER 

At Christmas time in the year 1887 the High Commissioner, 
Sir Hercules Robinson, was quietly occupied at Grahams- 
town with ceremonial duties and entertainments on the 
occasion of an Exhibition held in that loyal town to cele- 
brate the jubilee of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria. The 
festivities followed the usual course ; dances, banquets, 
and pony racing : the pony racing is remembered for the 
mild excitement over the change of ownership of a promis- 
ing pony, and the importance of the celebration was marked 
by the due quota of innocuous speeches. An expert staff 
of polite aide-de-camps and secretaries was in attendance 
to" Ughten the Governor's labours, to ensure that no jarring 
note should mar the smoothness of the proceedings and to 
provide for the comfort of the vice-regal party. Suddenly 
Cecil Rhodes, hot foot from Kimberley, burst in upon this 
pleasant assembly, bringing with him Sir Sidney Shippard, 
administrator of the new Crown Colony of British 
Bechuanaland. Rhodes had not come to listen to speeches 
or attend dances and pony races ; he was too busy for that 
with his gold companies and his diamond amalgamation ; 
but he had just heard news from the north which gave him 
such serious concern that he felt it necessary to interrupt 
his own occupations and the Governor's junketings for a 
serious talk on the situation. For nothing short of 
immediate action would, he beUeved, preserve England's 
power of advancing into the interior. Now Sir Hercules 
was a man of patriotic feeling and of sound common sense, 
who sympathized sincerely with Rhodes' s views ; he had 
indeed risked much by his support of the unconventional 

116 



THE CHARTER 117 

young diamond - digger against Mackenzie, the idol of 
Exeter Hall, Warren, the chosen agent of the British 
Government, and his own Cape Ministry. But after all he 
was merely a governor dependent on a Secretary of State 
distrustful of further responsibility in South Africa ; he 
had before him a lesson against unlicensed adventure in 
the fate of his predecessor. Sir Bartle Frere ; and he had 
done as much as could be expected of any one governor 
by his acquisition of Bechuanaland, Here now was Rhodes, 
sweeping down like a whirlwind upon the happy Grahams- 
town party, full of schemes for further " spheres of 
influence " and evidently bent on securing an immediate 
decision. He can hardly have been entirely welcome. 
Still Sir Hercules was a conscientious governor ; he had a 
liking and a great admiration for Rhodes ; so he resigned 
himself to the spell of his masterful visitor. 

The message which had disturbed Rhodes had come 
from his friend Ralph WilHams, the confidant of his schemes 
in the days of the Warren expedition, and at this time 
British agent at Pretoria. He had heard that a treaty had 
either been concluded or was about to be concluded between 
the South African RepubUc and Lo Bengula, king of the 
Matabeles, and had sent word to Rhodes that if it were 
ratified it would preclude all British enterprise north of 
Bechuanaland. This was a serious matter to Rhodes, who 
had always regarded Matabeleland, with its dependency 
Mashonaland, as the next stepping-stone to the Central 
Lakes, the northern Umit of his dreams of empire in Africa. 
The country had so far not been brought within the sphere 
of influence of any European power, and, if the Transvaal 
got beforehand with him, his plans would be brought 
to naught and all his labour on Bechuanaland, a mere 
" Suez Canal to the interior," wasted. The sudden visit to 
Grahamstown was to prevent this catastrophe. 

The Matabeles were an offshoot of the Zulus, who had 
broken away from the parent tribe under the leadership of 
Moselikatze, one of the Zulu King Chaka's captains, about 
the same time as the Boers of Cape Colony began their 
great trek. Beaten off by the Basutos, the Matabeles 
swarmed through the Free State and thence across the Vaal 



ii8 CECIL RHODES 

to the western districts of the Transvaal, leaving a track of 
desolation wherever they passed. Here they came into 
collision with Boer emigrants into the same district, one 
of them being Kruger himself, who told a Matabele dele- 
gation in 1887 that he did not speak from hearsay of those 
encounters ; " for I myself was present and, although 
then very young, I could handle a gun and shoot. Potgieter 
was my chief. We then came for the second time and drove 
away Moselikatze." After this defeat the chief led his 
savage warriors across the Limpopo to the broad pasture- 
lands north of Bechuanaland, and soon reduced to vassalage 
the Mahololo and Mashonas, then inhabiting a large tract 
of country south of the Zambesi. In 1868 Moselikatze 
died and was succeeded by his son Lo Bengula, a tyrant as 
bloodthirsty as his father. The sole object of the Matabele 
organisation was war. The young males of the tribe and 
those of the subject races captured in childhood were fed 
almost entirely on beef, a diet which killed the weaklings 
of dysentery and made the remainder very stout and fierce. 
In due time they were drafted into one or other of the 
regiments, into which the whole manhood was divided. 
Here the strictest discipUne was maintained, and no youth 
was allowed to marry until he had reached the age of 
thirty-five and had blooded himself in fight ; so, to give 
the would-be bridegrooms their chance, hostile raids on 
neighbouring kraals were a yearly occurrence. The fighting 
spirit of the race was also excited by periodical war-dances, 
in which the soldiers of the different regiments took part, 
attired in their gorgeous and terrifying trappings, plumes 
and capes of ostrich-feathers, otter-skin bands on their 
foreheads, ox-tails round their arms and legs, and kilts of 
wild-cat skin. After the destruction of the Zulu power in 
1879 the Matabeles were the most formidable fighting race 
left in South Africa. But since their early conflicts with 
the Boers they had not molested Europeans.^ Both 
Moselikatze and Lo Bengula, though firm in maintaining 
their right to '* refuse the road " through their territory 
to any European they chose, were friendly to the few they 

1 A story is told of Englishmen done to death by the Matabeles in 
1878, but the guilt was never brought home to Lo Bengula himself. 



THE CHARTER 119 

admitted. The great missionary Moffat had been allowed 
to establish a mission station at Inyati, and the hunters 
Baines, Hartley, Viljoen and Selous were always well 
received ; a few traders, too, were permitted to set up 
stores near the royal kraal. 

The Transvaal Boers had long cast covetous eyes on 
this country. In 1868, on the discovery of the Tati Gold 
Fields, President Pretorius had proclaimed it a Transvaal 
possession, but, on Sir PhiUp Wodehouse's protest, had 
taken no further steps. Again, after Majuba, Joubert had 
written to Lo Bengula urging him to ally himself with the 
Boers rather than the Enghsh, for, " when an Englishman 
once has your property in his hand, then he is like a monkey 
that has its hands full of pumpkin seeds ; — if you don't beat 
him to death he will never let go " ; and in the succeeding 
years various parties of Boers had talked of trekking into 
Matabeleland or Mashonaland. Kruger, however, never 
looked favourably on his rival Joubert's policy of expansion 
northwards. Since his rebuff in Bechuanaland his chief 
aim had been to obtain Swaziland on the east and access 
to the sea, in order to have a free port of his own ; and he 
had no wish to complicate the issue by quarrelling with 
England about the north. Still even Kruger was sometimes 
obliged to yield to pubhc opinion, and in 1887 he consented 
to the despatch of one Grobler to negotiate with Lo 
Bengula a treaty of protection. There seems Uttle doubt 
that in July 1887 Grobler obtained a document purporting 
to give the Transvaal wide powers of jurisdiction over their 
own subjects settled in Matabeleland, and to keep a consul in 
residence at the king's kraal. In fact, when Ralph WilHams 
sent his message to Rhodes, Grobler was on the point of 
starting to take up his post as consul. Whether Lo Bengula 
regarded the treaty as anything more than a vague renewal 
of friendship is doubtful. At any rate the republic was 
founding on it much greater claims than its words implied ; 
for Rhodes had received independent evidence in a letter 
from Pretoria that the Transvaal had already assumed the 
right of determining on concessions to Europeans in 
Matabeleland. 

Rhodes submitted his evidence to the Governor at 



120 CECIL RHODES 

Grahamstown, and urged him at all costs to prevent the 
country falling under the control of the Transvaal. Instant 
action was necessary, or it would be too late, for Grobler 
was already on his way, and it might be impossible to 
dislodge him when once he had estabUshed his influence. 
Sir Hercules was impressed by the danger, but Rhodes was 
in too much of a hurry : precipitate action might not be 
approved of at home and the risk was great. But Rhodes 
had made up his mind, and when that was so, as Barnato 
had observed, " he ties you up and you cannot resist him." 
So the Governor was tied up. Six years later Rhodes, in 
anecdotal mood, described to a Cape Town audience his 
methods of persuading Sir Hercules. The occasion referred 
to was not this interview, but the arguments were probably 
similar, for Rhodes' s methods of arguing were all his 
own and did not vary much. Bechuanaland had been 
secured, and, " I remember so well," said Rhodes, " that in 
my discussions with your late Governor he was good enough 
to say, * Well, I think that is enough,' and, Mr. Mayor, 
the only reply I made to him was, * Do come with me and 
look at the block-house on Table Mountain.* I used that 
expression to him, and then I said, ' Those good old people, 
two hundred years ago, thought that block-house on Table 
Mountain was the hmit of their ideas, but now let us face 
it to-day. Where are we ? We are considerably beyond 
the Vaal River, and supposing that those good people were 
to come to life again to-day, what would they think of it 
and their block-house ? * Then I said, * Sir, will you 
consider, during the period you have been the representative 
of Her Majesty in this colony, what you have done ? We 
are now on latitude 22°.' It was amusing when he said to 
me, * And what a trouble it has been ! ' He said to me, 
* But where will you stop ? * and I rephed, * I will stop 
where the country has not been claimed.' Your old 
Governor said, * Let us look at the map,' and I showed him 
that it was the southern border of Tanganyika. He was 
a little upset. I said that the Great Powers at home 
marked the map and did nothing : adding, ' Let us try to 
mark the map, and we know that we shall do something.' 
' Well,' said Sir Hercules Robinson, ' I think you should be 



THE CHARTER 121 

satisfied with the Zambesi as a boundary.' [He was already 
getting tied up.] I replied, ' Let us take a piece of note- 
paper, and let us measure from the block-house to the 
Vaal River ; that is the individual effort of the people. 
Now,' I said, * let us measure what you have done in your 
temporary existence, and then we will finish by measuring 
up my imaginations.' We took a piece of notepaper and 
measured the efforts of the country since the Dutch occupied 
and founded it. We measured what he had done in his life, 
and then we measured my imaginations ; and his Excel- 
lency, who is no longer with us, said, * I will leave you 
alone.' " [" You cannot resist him ! "] 

By such simple, child-like persistence Rhodes, reinforced 
by Shippard, a convinced partisan of his views, won over 
Sir Hercules. On Boxing Day Shippard was empowered to 
write a despatch to his assistant commissioner, J. S. Moffat, 
then on a visit to Lo Bengula, bidding him inquire about 
the bargain with the Transvaal and persuade the king to 
sign a treaty recognizing the exclusive influence of Great 
Britain in his country. Rhodes then returned to his 
business at Kimberley ; and a messenger was sent with 
such urgent instructions for haste that after a journey of 
700 miles he brought the despatch to Moffat before the 
end of January. Moffat, the son of Livingstone's father- 
in-law, who had founded the Inyati mission in Moselikatze's 
time, was a good agent for the purpose, as he had tact and 
was trusted by Lo Bengula. Going quietly to work, he 
got the king to admit that the Transvaal had no right to 
interfere in his country, that he had no wish to receive 
Grobler as consul, and within a fortnight, on February 11, 
1888, had persuaded him to sign a treaty of perpetual amity 
with the Queen, whereby he engaged himself not to part 
with any territory or sign a treaty with any other power 
without the High Commissioner's sanction. 

Thanks to the despised " Imperial factor," Rhodes had 
now obtained what in mining practice might be termed an 
option on Matabeleland. His next business was to convert 
this option into firm possession. Neither the Cape nor the 
Home Government could be looked to for further assistance 
at this stage ; the Cape was not yet ready to absorb even 



122 CECIL RHODES 

Bechuanaland, while the High Commissioner had gone to 
the utmost limits of his power. Private enterprise was the 
only resource left : so Rhodes determined on private 
enterprise ; and, if he could obtain the sanction of the 
state for his private enterprise, so much the better. 
He could look to a long line of illustrious chartered 
companies as his models. Starting from the days of the 
Tudors there had been the Levant and Russia Companies 
for purely trading purposes, the Company of Adventurers 
of London trading to Africa, and the Hudson's Bay and 
East India Companies with their territorial and administra- 
tive rights. These ancient corporations had by this time 
either disappeared or lost their special privileges, but a 
similar form of chartered company had recently been revived 
in the British North Borneo Company of 1881 and the Royal 
Niger Company of 1886, while for the Imperial British East 
Africa Company also Sir William Mackinnon was shortly 
to obtain the royal charter. At a time when the values 
of territory in Africa were still but Httle known, and yet 
every nation was scrambling for power there, the advantage 
to the state of such semi-official companies to exploit new 
ground was manifest. " If the results are good," said a 
cynical writer, " they can be made the property of the 
state. If the value be Httle, the company can be left to its 
own devices and its work be ignored." On the other hand, 
the attraction to the private venturer was the chance of 
large profits. So Rhodes, following these examples, decided 
to obtain speculative concessions in the new country and 
protect them by a royal charter. His own main object was 
to preserve as much as possible of Africa for British civiUza- 
tion, to his mind the greatest blessing in the world ; but to 
make converts he did not rely on this lure alone. " Pure 
philanthropy is all very well in its way," as he said, " but 
philanthropy plus 5 per cent is a good deal better." The 
marvellous discovery of gold on the Rand had disposed the 
pubUc to look favourably on the reports of gold to be found 
in Lo Bengula's dominions brought by every traveller of 
repute. So gold was to be the bait to attract the public 
to his projects of northern expansion. By the beginning 
of 1888 all things were ready: he had founded the Gold 



THE CHARTER 123 

Fields and was on the eve of amalgamating the diamond 
mines ; so he had no anxiety about finance and was prepared 
to start forthwith. 

Immediately on his return from Grahamstown, even 
before the Moffat treaty had been signed, he and Beit 
sent up a trader, Fry, to obtain a gold-mining concession 
from Lo Bengula. Fry fell ill and returned without 
accomplishing anything. Rhodes then paid a flying visit 
to England, and there heard that he had serious rivals 
in the field. Two aUied companies, the Bechuanaland 
Exploration Company and the Exploring Company, were 
in process of formation to obtain and exploit concessions 
in the Protectorate and Matabeleland, and the promoters 
had already informed the Colonial Office of their plans. 
Rhodes also went to sound Lord Knutsford, who, without 
committing himself, seemed impressed by Rhodes's ideas, 
whereupon he hurried back to South Africa, convinced that 
operations must be conducted on a larger scale. For the 
new mission to Lo Bengula he had some difficulty in finding 
the right men ; but finally pitched upon Rudd, his partner, 
who for sixteen years had been hand in glove with him in 
all his ventures ; F. R. Thompson, who had helped him 
with the Kimberley compounds, and from the age of twelve 
had been learning native languages and customs ; and lastly, 
his old Oxford friend, Rochfort Maguire, the fellow of All 
Souls. Rudd's son, a fine strapping youth much admired by 
the natives, accompanied his father ; no expense was spared 
on equipment, and there was an imposing retinue of Kaffir 
drivers and attendants, all under the direction of Rhodes's 
personal servant WilHam. None of the party had been to 
Matabeleland before, but two of them spoke the language, 
while the third, Maguire, had that imperturbable Oxford 
demeanour which no difiiculties or hardships could ruffle. 
The mission was well calculated to impress the king and his 
councillors with the importance of the man they represented. 

Rudd, Maguire and Thompson arrived at Buluwayo, 
the king's principal kraal, in the latter half of 1888, having 
previously announced their business in a letter drawn up 
by the fellow of All Souls. Lo Bengula was an impos- 
ing personage, with considerable powers of attraction to 



124 CECIL RHODES 

Europeans. Sir Sidney Shippard, who also visited him this 
year, thus describes his appearance as he came out of his 
royal waggon : "A few minutes after I had taken my seat 
near his waggon a curtain was drawn aside, and the great 
man appeared and deliberately stepped over the front box 
and sat down on the board before the driver's seat. He 
was completely naked save for a very long piece of dark 
blue cloth, rolled very small and wound round his body, 
which it no wise concealed, and a monkey skin worn as a 
small apron and about the size of a Highland sporan. In 
person he is rather tall . . . and very stout, though by no 
means unwieldy. . . . His colour is a fine bronze, and he 
evidently takes great care of his person and is scrupulously 
clean. He wears the leathern ring over his forehead as a 
matter of course. Altogether he is a very fine- looking man, 
and in spite of his obesity has a most m.ajestic carriage. Like 
all the Matabele warriors, who despise a stooping gait in 
a man, Lo Bengula walks quite erect with his head thrown 
somewhat back and his broad chest expanded, and as he 
marches along at a slow pace with his long staff in his 
right hand, while all the men around shout his praises, he 
looks his part to perfection." Like other absolute monarchs 
in more civihzed countries, he had to work hard for his 
living, and to consult his people's wishes. He spent much 
time in painting himself up for rain-making, and, though less 
belhcose than his warriors, was unable to resist their un- 
ceasing demands for raids on Mashonas and other tribes. 
He was hospitable and well disposed to the Europeans he 
knew, but much troubled with the many concession-hunters, 
who, as he pathetically remarked to the High Commissioner, 
" come in here like wolves without my permission and make 
roads into my country." Many of his young bloods would 
have been quite ready to make short work of the intruders, 
but he had the political instinct to see that this would be 
fatal to his tribe ; besides, he had a regal sense of hospitality 
even to intruders in his country. 

When Rudd and his friends arrived they found plenty 
of Europeans before them. The most influential was the 
missionary Helm, who generally interpreted in important 
negotiations and was trusted by the king ; Fairbairn and 



THE CHARTER 125 

Usher, the two resident traders, were also privileged persons, 
being regarded as members of the tribe. Fairbaim was the 
custodian of the chief's great elephant seal, without which 
treaties and concessions had no validity, and with another 
old resident, Sam Edwards, had the mining rights in the 
Tati district, with authority to make laws ** for keeping 
the peace and order.'* These traders, who made great 
profits by their monopoly, had no wish to see others invading 
their preserves. Two rival syndicates, Wood, Francis and 
Chapman, and Johnson and Heany, were each claiming the 
mining concession in some territory disputed between Lo 
Bengula and his southern neighbour Khama, having each 
obtained a grant from one of the two rival disputants. 
Maund, already in high favour at Buluwayo, was there for 
the Exploring Company, "guinea-pigs" Rhodes called 
them, seeking as wide powers as Rhodes himself ; Phillips, 
Leask and Tainton were also on the look out for conces- 
sions, and there were Boers and Germans as well, hungrily 
waiting for what they could pick up. With all these rivals 
in the field, with Moffat and Shippard on the one side and 
Grobler on the other recommending their respective coun- 
tries for special favours, with the English bishop of 
Bloemfontein, in company with a German count, choosing 
the same moment to inspect his mission stations in 
Mashonaland, no wonder Lo Bengula was worried and 
his young men straining at the leash. Grobler, the Trans- 
vaal emissary, was the first to fall out, for in passing through 
Bechuanaland he was waylaid and murdered by an impi 
sent by Khama, who had a grievance against him for some 
horse-coping transaction.^ But enough rivals remained to 
make it hkely that Matabeleland. would be reduced to the 
horrible state of confusion of which Swaziland was already 
an example. Here the chief had been persuaded to give 
away concessions right and left to Boer and English 
speculators, who quarrelled among themselves and made the 

^ By order of the High Commissioner an inquiry was held by Shippard 
into the facts, and in spite of Shippard 's prejudiced report against Grobler, 
Khama was ordered by the British Government to pay an annuity to 
Grobler's widow. There is no ground for the suggestion made by some 
Boers at the time that English of&cials had any connection with the 
murder. 



126 CECIL RHODES 

country a land of strife and turbulence, while the chief was 
steadily drinking himself to death with the champagne, 
which represented his particular mess of pottage. As 
Rhodes had convinced Sir Hercules, the only possible 
remedies were either to proclaim a protectorate or establish 
one strong company with a monopoly of all concessions. 

In their attempt to get this monopoly Rhodes's agents 
had a good deal of indirect support from the favour with 
which he was known to be regarded by Shippard and 
Moffat as well as the High Commissioner. Nevertheless, 
they had no light task. For three months or more they were 
kept waiting on Lo Bengula's good pleasure, with the un- 
comfortable prospect of being massacred at any time by 
the young warriors. If they bathed or washed their teeth 
they were accused of bewitching the water, and were always 
unwittingly transgressing some tribal law ; once they were 
warned of an instant attack and decided to sell their lives 
dearly. However, Lo Bengula always managed to protect 
them, and at last, after an indaba of two days, consented, 
on October 30, 1888, to grant the desired concession. Even 
then there was a hitch about signing, for Lo Bengula 
thought his royal word should be enough ; but in the end 
his mark and the elephant seal were affixed to a document 
granting to Rudd and the others " exclusive power over 
all metals and minerals situated and contained in his king- 
doms, principaUties and dominions," with hcence to win 
the same and enjoy all profits therefrom ; and further, 
Lo Bengula, " having been much molested of late by divers 
persons seeking and desiring to obtain grants and cessions 
of land and mining rights in his territories," authority was 
given them to exclude all such persons from his dominions. 
In return, the beneficiaries bound themselves to pay the 
chief £100 a month and to deliver to him 1000 rifles, 100,000 
rounds of ammunition, and an armed steamer on the 
Zambesi, the last a happy afterthought of Rhodes : " same," 
he wrote to Rudd, " as Stanley put on Upper Congo." 

Hardly won, the concession was nearly lost. Rhodes 
had instructed Rudd to bring it away as soon as it was 
completed. Rudd " obtained the road " from Lo Bengula, 
who parted with him on most friendly terms, gave him a 



THE CHARTER 127 

large firkin of beer, and told him to bring up his " big 
brother Rhodes " next time. But on his journey through 
the Bechuana desert, with one Kaffir driver, Rudd found all 
the water-holes he had counted on dried up, and had to 
abandon the horses and make the best of his way on foot ; 
finally, overcome with thirst and almost dying, he just 
managed to hide his precious document in an ant-bear hole 
before he fell down insensible. In this state he was dis- 
covered by some kindly Bechuanas, who gave him water and 
brought him back to Ufe ; afterwards he was picked up by 
Sir Sidney Shippard's escort, to which his son had been 
attached, and, having recovered the concession from the 
ant-bear hole, was brought with it safely to Kimberley. 

For more than a year after he had received the conces- 
sion Rhodes was busy making it water-tight. His first 
anxiety was about Lo Bengula ; he knew that every kind 
of pressure would be put on the chief by rival speculators 
to induce him to withdraw his promise or give other 
concessions incompatible with it, and in all his instructions 
to Rudd he had insisted that " if we get anything we must 
always have some one resident or they will intrigue to upset 
us," for " nature," he kept repeating, " abhors a vacuum." 
So on Rudd's departure Thompson and Maguire were left 
behind to fill the vacuum. At first they retained their 
influence. They persuaded Lo Bengula to give public 
notice that the concession had been granted and was a 
bar to all others, and at the end of the year Maguire was 
put in command of an impi to warn off Haggard and other 
agents of the Austral Africa Company, who had come into 
the country to ask for a concession. But at the begin- 
ning of 1889 there was an ominous change. Maund, the 
capable agent of the Exploring Company, regained control. 
Another pubHc notice was issued, this time denying on Lo 
Bengula's behalf that Rudd had been granted all mineral 
rights in the country ; and a deputation of indunas was 
sent to England under Maund's charge to interview " the 
great white Queen." Maund and the Exploring Company, 
as will appear, were disposed of by Rhodes himself ; but that 
was not the end of the trouble with Lo Bengula. Fairbairn, 
keeper of the elephant seal, so worked upon the chief that he 



128 CECIL RHODES 

got him to send a letter to the Colonial Office saying that 
he had signed the Rudd concession under a misapprehen- 
sion. But Rhodes's means were not exhausted. His 
friend Jameson, who on a hunting trip in Matabeleland 
had earned the king's gratitude by curing him of gout, was 
still in reserve ; so Jameson and another Kimberley doctor, 
Rutherfoord Harris, were sent up to try their powers of 
persuasion, and for the time being succeeded. But no 
sooner were their backs turned than Lo Bengula changed 
round again. He no longer needed the promptings of 
disappointed traders and speculators to influence him 
against the concession. His own fears and the anger of 
his warriors kept him up to the mark. He professed 
ignorance of what he had signed and demanded back the 
original document for verification ; and he wrote to the 
Queen declaring that " the white people are troubhng me 
much about gold. If the Queen hears that I have given 
away the whole country, it is not so. I do not understand 
where the dispute is, because I have no knowledge of 
writing." To his indignant indunas and warriors he offered 
as a scapegoat his chief adviser, Lotchi, who, he said, had 
** bhnded " him and induced him to sign the document. 
Lotchi walked out of the council a doomed man, to make 
his last preparations. He warned all his people to escape, 
and said to the missionary Helm, " I am a dead man." 
And so it proved. A detachment of the Imbesu or Royal 
Regiment came to his kraal, carried off the young children 
and cattle, and killed Lotchi and all the others who had not 
fled. The position of Maguire and Thompson had become 
almost as precarious, and, though the king did all he could 
to protect them, they were virtually hostages. The first 
to flee the country was Maguire, in April 1889, and a month 
or so later Thompson made his escape. Thus the 
" vacuum " so much abhorred by Rhodes was created. 
But before this the centre of interest had shifted from Lo 
Bengula's kraal to Cape Town or London or wherever 
Rhodes happened to be. 

His policy with rivals who claimed concessions from 
Lo Bengula was the same as with rivals on the diamond 
fields : to make a deal with them if possible, and only fight 



THE CHARTER ' 129 

them in the last resort. He himself afterwards said that 
his worst difficulty in acquiring Matabeleland for the Empire 
was the settlement of some of the outrageous claims set 
up against him. One man, who had never left England, 
actually demanded compensation because he had not been 
able to carry out his intention of seeking a mining licence 
in Matabeleland owing to Rhodes's previous concession. 
Rhodes did not compensate him, but he did others with 
claims hardly less preposterous. When he heard that 
Haggard and Wallop had been warned off by Maguire and 
his impi, fearing " a literary campaign against us," he 
proposed to indemnify them. More than a dozen claimants 
of concessions were handsomely paid to drop them or merge 
them with his own, and no questions asked about their 
validity ; and many a South African was long afterwards 
drawing a steady income of £600 or more from this source. 
The only rivals he seriously feared were the two allied 
Bechuanaland Exploration and Exploring Companies. 
After sounding the Colonial Office in the summer of 1888, 
in the following January their principal directors, Mr. 
George Cawston and Lord Gifford, had made the explicit 
proposal that the two Companies should be incorporated 
under Charter to work all the minerals in Khama's and Lo 
Bengula's territories and build a railway to the Zambesi. 
These were very much Rhodes's own objects, only, as he 
put it, this interior company must be De Beers and the 
Gold Fields with a combined capital of thirteen millions 
instead of a company with a beggarly ^^50,000. The 
Companies' two agents in South Africa had soon come to 
the same conclusion. One of them was Sir Charles Metcalfe, 
the engineer and an old friend of Rhodes, who had been 
sent out to make surveys for the proposed railway ; but 
as soon as he came to Kimberley he found that nothing 
could be done without Rhodes's help. Maund, the other 
agent, had made a good fight for his principals at Lo 
Bengula's kraal, but on his way to England in January 
1889 with the Matabele indunas began to feel some doubts 
after a conversation with Rhodes at Kimberley. Learning 
from him that, if it came to a fight, money would be no 
object, but that there might be means of accommodation, 

K 



130 CECIL RHODES 

Maund thought it prudent for the time being to withhold 
certain important letters and documents in his possession. 
Nevertheless Rhodes soon saw that it was time to follow 
him to England to conclude negotiations and arrange about 
the Charter himself. " Our enemies," he wrote, " may 
bowl us out if I do not go at once to headquarters. Our 
concession is so gigantic, it is like giving a man the whole 
of Austraha : and our opponents are numerous." 

He reached England in March 1889 with two tasks before 
him : first to deal with opposition from rival syndicates, 
and secondly to persuade the British Government and the 
British public to entrust the administration and exploita- 
tion of the interior of Africa to a Chartered Company formed 
by himself. The first task was comparatively easy. When 
Rhodes and Cawston had submitted to the Colonial Office 
their rival proposals, Sir Robert Herbert had thrown out 
the hint that their objects would be more easily attained 
if they combined their interests ; and they had immediately 
agreed. Within a few days of Rhodes's arrival the terms 
of amalgamation were settled. The Exploring Company 
was given a share in the Rudd concession, which was held 
by Rhodes, Beit, the Gold Fields and a few others, while 
Rhodes and Beit joined the board of the Exploring Com- 
pany. The funds for developing the new country and for 
building the railway were to be provided by the Rudd 
Concession syndicate, converted first into the Central 
Search Association, and afterwards, when the Bechuanaland 
Exploration Company and other conflicting syndicates had 
been brought in, into the United Concessions Company, 
Limited. Thus all legitimate interests in the undeveloped 
parts of South Africa up to the Zambesi would be in- 
corporated into one great company. 

But in the political field things did not go so smoothly. 
His old adversary, Mackenzie, was back in England, urging 
the Government to part with no more power in South Africa. 
He was still agitating against the transfer of the Crown 
Colony of Bechuanaland to the Cape, wliich Rhodes desired, 
and was even more opposed to the grant of administrative 
powers or a commercial monopoly to any company in the 
Bechuanaland Protectorate or Matabeleland. Backed by 



¥ 



THE CHARTER 131 

the Aborigines Protection Society and the London Chamber 
of Commerce he bombarded Lord Knutsford with memo- 
randa representing that direct Crown Government was the 
only means of securing justice for the natives, and that the 
existing stagnation of Kimberley was an illustration of the 
evils of one too powerful company. Still more influential on 
the same side was the South African Committee, composed 
of certain well-known members of Parliament and others, 
such as Sir T. Fowell Buxton, Albert Grey (afterwards Earl 
Grey), the Duke of Fife, Evelyn Ashley, Arnold Forster, 
and Joseph Chamberlain. In a circular sent out by this 
committee, they attacked the concession given to Rudd, 
" a Cape colonist who is beheved to have received very 
influential support in the commercial part of his under- 
taking from persons in authority at the Cape. ... A 
single speculator who buys for an old song the most valuable 
territory in South Africa.** Bradlaugh, Labouchere and 
other free-lances in the House of Commons asked awkward 
questions about the favour shown by the High Commissioner 
to Rhodes's associates. The stipulation that Lo Bengula 
should receive payment in arms and ammunition was also 
specially fastened upon for attack. Already in South Africa 
the Bishop of Bloemfontein and others had commented 
strongly on this provision, and their protests had been 
re-echoed in the House by Chamberlain. The Government 
at first also disapproved, but then weakly accepted the 
Jesuitical plea, originated by Moffat and endorsed by the 
High Commissioner, that rifles were a less effective and 
less brutal means of massacre in the hands of natives than 
assegais. Rhodes had also aUenated many of that party, 
to which he might naturally have looked for support in 
his schemes of Imperial development, by his disparaging 
remarks on the " Imperial factor *' and by his alliance with 
the Bond. The Times, for example, persisted in identifying 
this organization with the extremists who demanded the 
dissolution of all ties with England, and solemnly warned 
Rhodes, now that he had " made his pile," to turn his 
attention seriously to patriotism. 

But, though he had powerful enemies, he was an adept 
at winning powerful fijjpids. It would, no doubt, have been 



# 



h 



132 CECIL RHODES 

comparatively easy for him to obtain absolution from the 
Unionist party then in power and to rely entirely on their 
support for a policy in keeping with their traditions. But 
he had no such inchnation. Just as in South Africa he 
sought the co-operation of Dutch as well as English, so in 
England he wanted to carry all parties with him and devoted 
especial attention to concihating certain sections of the 
opposition. This came to him the more easily as on certain 
questions his sympathies were rather with the Radicals than 
the Conservatives, especially with those Radicals who had 
been taught by Stead and Dilke to take an interest in 
colonial affairs ; and, though Gladstone personally was 
always suspect to him, and his unfavourable impressions 
were only confirmed by the few conversations he had with 
that great statesman, he was strongly in favour of Home 
Rule for Ireland. He put himself into the hands of Sir 
Charles Mills, the Agent-General for the Cape, and by his 
means soon obtained the long-desired introduction to W. T. 
Stead, then at the height of his power as a journahst. Stead 
came unwillingly to the interview, for he was an ally of 
Mackenzie's and was not prepossessed by what he had 
heard of Rhodes ; but after talking to him for a few hours 
he made the discovery that Rhodes was the man he had 
long been looking for to be the practical exponent of his 
own doctrines ; while Rhodes had already discovered in 
the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette that Stead was his 
mentor and his prophet. From that moment the strangely 
assorted pair entered into a close alHance, and a friendship 
was born that survived even their later divergence in 
politics. Rhodes confided to Stead all his dreams and his 
plans and made him his executor ; Stead, who never did 
things by halves, began talking and writing about Rhodes 
with all the force of his enthusiastic nature, and soon 
persuaded the British public that in him they had found 
a new saviour of the British Empire. Mills also introduced 
him to Dilke, who, though not carried away, like Stead, 
by sudden enthusiasms, was also impressed by the young 
statesman's broad-minded views on South African and 
Imperial politics. About the same time, probably, he also 
first made the acquaintance of Rothschild's son-in-law, 



THE CHARTER 133 

Lord Rosebery, whom he came to look to as the EngHsh 
statesman most in harmony with his general outlook. 

The benevolence of the Irish party, important less for any 
active support they could give than for their deadly power of 
obstructing any cause obnoxious to them, had already been 
secured. In 1887 Rhodes had travelled with Mr. Swift 
M'NeiU out to South Africa and told him of his sympathy 
with Home Rule ; he had presided at one of his meetings 
in Cape Town and offered to contribute £10,000 to the Irish 
party funds. In the following year, in an interview with 
Parnell and in letters they exchanged, he had clearly 
defined his position and laid down certain conditions for 
his support. His main interest in Home Rule was in its 
bearing on the larger question of Imperial Federation or, 
as he frankly told Parnell, " because I believed that Irish 
Home Rule would lead to Imperial Home Rule." In his 
conception of Home Rule he was in advance even of 
Gladstone, for he had no belief in pettifogging safeguards 
for the judiciary and constabulary or in maintaining the 
fiscal dependence, " tribute " he called it, of Ireland ; the 
settlement, he believed, should be based on absolute trust 
of the Irish, and he would give them as complete a form 
of self-government as any of the self-governing dominions. 
But there was one point on which he insisted for his support 
and contribution to the party funds, that Irish members 
should be retained at Westminster. Their exclusion by 
Gladstone's BiU of 1886 he regarded as a fatal blot on that 
measure, for he hoped to make the representation at West- 
minster of a self-governing Ireland the precedent for the 
admission there of representatives from all the self-governing 
colonies. In fact the chief importance to him of Home Rule 
was that it might be made the first step to a really Imperial 
Parliament for a federated Empire. Parnell, whom Rhodes 
described as " the most reasonable and sensible man I ever 
met," agreed to Rhodes's terms : the Irish party would 
not in future oppose the representation of Ireland at 
Westminster and would agree to a clause extending the 
same privilege to any colony contributing to Imperial 
defence. And so the bargain was concluded. One advan- 
tage of it to Rhodes was that in the subsequent discussions 



134 CECIL RHODES 

on his South African poUcy some of his warmest supporters 
in the House were found in the ranks of the Irish party ; 
and room was found on their benches for his friend Maguire, 
who acted as a semi-official exponent of his views. No 
doubt Rhodes had some such quid pro quo in his mind 
when he struck his bargain with Parnell, but none the less 
it was entirely in accordance with his deepest convictions. 
No personal consideration of minor advantages deterred 
him two years later from expostulating with Parnell, when 
he appeared to have gone back on his specific pledges, and 
obtaining from him a renewal of his promise about Irish 
representation. 

Rhodes needed all the extraneous support he could get, 
for Lord Salisbury's Government had at first been very 
shy of his projects and indeed of all further adventure in 
Africa. It is true they accepted the Moffat treaty and 
waived aside protests against it from the Transvaal and 
Germany, but in June 1888 they were quite wilhng to accept 
Portugal's extravagant claim to a continuous dominion 
from Angola on the west coast to Mozambique on the east. 
This would have entirely precluded Rhodes from securing 
for British enterprise the central tracts of Barotseland and 
Nyassaland north of the Zambesi. The Rudd concession 
had been looked on coldly at first, and a message was 
sent to Lo Bengula from the Queen advising him to scruti- 
nize very carefully any concession he might grant, and at 
any rate to give away " only an ox, not his whole herd." 
The leader of the House, W. H. Smith, even declared that 
British Bechuanaland would not be handed over to the 
Cape, and very discouraging answers about the prospect of 
a Charter were given in Parliament. However, pressure from 
various quarters induced the Government to modify their 
attitude. The Cape Government protested against any sur- 
render to Portugal on the question of free access to Central 
Africa, and Sir Hercules Robinson was goaded by W. H. 
Smith's speech and Mackenzie's memoranda to his notorious 
declaration about " the amateur meddling of irresponsible 
and ill-advised persons in England." Robinson's support 
for Rhodes's plan was unquahfied, and no doubt had great 
influence on the Government. He drew a lurid picture on 



THE CHARTER 135 

the one hand of the confusion in Swaziland and on the 
other of the evils of Crown Colony government " on the 
cheap," as exemplified in British Bechuanaland, where 
there was " a perpetual wrangle with the Treasury for the 
means of maintaining a decent administration " ; and con- 
cluded that the only way of escape from these dangers 
in Lo Bengula's dominions was to establish a strong 
Chartered Company. 

These considerations, backed by the powerful appeals of 
Rhodes's influential supporters, converted Lord Knutsford 
and the Government to Rhodes's scheme. On April 30, 
1889, Lord Gifford on behalf of the Exploring Company, 
and Rhodes, Rudd and Beit representing the Gold Fields 
of South Africa, jointly applied for a Charter to a company 
prepared to carry out the following objects : 

1. To extend the railway and telegraph northwards 

towards the Zambesi. 

2. To encourage emigration and colonization. 

3. To promote trade and commerce. 

4. To develop minerals and other concessions under one 

powerful organization, so as to avoid conflicts 
between competing interests. 

Lord Knutsford forwarded the proposal to Lord Salis- 
bury with the comment that the country would thereby be 
saved such heavy expenses as it had incurred in British 
Bechuanaland and also would retain more control over a 
Chartered Company than it would over a Joint Stock 
Company. Lord Salisbury's own view was that such far- 
reaching objects fell properly within the province of the 
Government but, being convinced that the House of 
Commons would not vote the money, gave his blessing to 
the project. Rhodes and his associates were asked to draft 
a Charter, and were given a private intimation that it 
would be advisable to include in their list of directors men 
of social and political standing who would command more 
respect in England than those who like Rhodes himself, Beit, 
Cawston and Gifford, were merely associated with South 
African companies. Rhodes took the hint and consulted his 
friend Colonel Euan Smith on hkely men. Lord Balfour of 



136 CECIL RHODES 

Burleigh was first suggested as Chairman, but his connection 
with the Government was a bar ; thereupon Rhodes per- 
suaded the Duke of Abercorn to accept the position ; and 
the Prince of Wales's son-in-law, the Duke of Fife, also 
consented to join the Board. With his sure instinct for 
conciliating opponents Rhodes then approached Albert 
Grey, one of the most distinguished members of the South 
African Committee and, with the Duke of Fife, a signatory 
of the Circular directed against his concession. Grey hardly 
knew Rhodes and first consulted Lord Salisbury, being 
inclined Hke him to think that the Company's objects ought 
to be secured by direct Government action. Reassured on 
this score by Salisbury's own view of the difficulties, he then 
asked Chamberlain for his advice. " Well," said Chamber- 
lain, " I know only three things about Rhodes and they all 
put me against him : (i.) he has made an enormous fortune 
very rapidly, (ii.) he is an Afrikander (i.e. not an Imperialist), 
(iii.) he gave £10,000 to Parnell." Grey assured him that 
he believed Rhodes to be a single-minded patriot : " Well, 
I have given you my advice," retorted Chamberlain, " you 
must decide for yourself." Grey did decide to cast in his 
lot with Rhodes, and, having once done so, ever afterwards 
supported him through thick and thin, and came to love him 
with all the chivalry of his warm-hearted nature. To have 
gained Grey, " the Paladin of his generation," as Courtney 
called him, was one of the best bits of work Rhodes ever 
did for himself and his great ideas ; for in after days, when 
doubts arose about Rhodes's motives, the staunchness to 
his cause of such a transparently honest man reassured 
many ; and his sweet companionship was a solace in some 
of Rhodes's darkest days. 

The question of the directors once satisfactorily settled, 
the remaining stages before the issue of the Charter were 
merely a matter of slow and solemn formality. The petition 
and draft had to be considered by the Colonial and Foreign 
Offices, a Committee of the Privy Council and the Privy 
Council itself, before the Letters Patent granting a Royal 
Charter of Incorporation to the British South Africa Company 
were signed by the Queen on October 29, 1889. Long before 
this Rhodes had returned to South Africa. Being a man who 



THE CHARTER 137 

did not like idleness in London, as his friend and solicitor 
Hawksley described him, he said, " I have done all I can, 
and I will leave you to have the formahties settled." 
Before leaving, however, he gave a taste of his impetuous 
methods to the Colonial Office. To save time, he writes 
on June i, he is prepared to pay the Government £30,000 
immediately for a telegraph hne from Mafeking, as he would 
be bound to do under the Charter, and a further £4000 a 
year for the upkeep of a British resident at Buluwayo to 
advise Lo Bengula and " give to the Company moral support 
as far as this can be done without entailing on H.M. 
Government any responsibihty or expense." A fortnight 
later comes the answer from the Colonial Office agreeing 
in principle to these proposals. " To whom shall I make 
the payments ? " asks Rhodes by return. " Not so fast," 
replies the Colonial Office a week later, " you must wait 
till the Charter is granted." Rhodes did not wait, and on 
his return to South Africa cabled to the Colonial Office 
for 250 miles of telegraph wire, No. 8 Siemens, and a 
corresponding quantity of telegraph poles. But it was not 
till a week after the Charter had been approved that his 
money was accepted and the wire and poles despatched. 

The power granted by Charter to the British South 
Africa Company was, as Rhodes had said of the Rudd 
concession, " gigantic." Certain clauses were inserted for 
the protection of native rights, freedom of religion, trade 
and previous concessions ; the Secretary of State had 
Umited rights of supervising the Company's operations ; 
and after twenty-five years, or earUer, if the Company's 
privileges were misused, the Charter might be revoked. 
Otherwise they had almost unfettered freedom of action. 
The Company's " principal field of operations " was all 
South Africa north of the new Crown Colony and the 
Transvaal and west of the Portuguese possessions in East 
Africa : thus it included the Bechuanaland Protectorate 
and had no Hmit northwards, for Rhodes, " not satisfied 
with the Zambesi as a boundary," had had his way. In 
this vast territory the Company was given power to make 
treaties, promulgate laws, preserve the peace, maintain a 
police force, and acquire new concessions : it could make 



138 CECIL RHODES 

roads, railways, harbours, or undertake other pubUc works, 
own or charter ships, engage in mining or any other in- 
dustry, estabhsh banks, make land grants and carry on any 
lawful commerce, trade, pursuit or business. B 

The capital for this vast undertaking was fixed at a 
million in £i shares. It must be admitted that the pro- 
moters took good care of their own interests, for not only 
did they receive 90,000 shares on account of rights and 
concessions handed over to the Company, but the United 
Concessions Company retained a half share in any profits 
to be hereafter made. But there was no difficulty in 
obtaining subscribers. Except for a few questions in the 
House by Labouchere and others all opposition to the grant 
of the Charter had died down, and the public accepted it 
without demur. Confidence was given to investors by a 
subscription from De Beers for 200,000 shares, the support 
of the Gold Fields and Rhodes's own large holding. But 
this demonstration of good faith was hardly needed, for 
the public were fascinated by the promise of wealth in 
the new country. The Times wrote of it : "It is rich, 
fabulously rich, we are told, in precious metals and a 
haK-a-dozen others besides," a country where there was 
game in plenty on the uplands and cultivable ground, 
" only in need of scratching to smile with com and all 
kinds of agricultural wealth," watered as it was by " a 
network of unfailing streams," beside which " the cattle 
fatten in peace." In this " land of Goshen," three times 
the size of the United Kingdom, The Times concluded its 
leader : " Whether the Company finds the wealth of Ophir 
in the mountains and rivers of Mashonaland or not, we 
cannot doubt that it will lay the basis of a great Enghsh- 
speaking colony in what appears to be the fairest region 
in Africa." With such appeals to the desire for lucre and 
to public spirit no wonder the shares were eagerly taken 
up. Rich men subscribed their thousands and small 
investors their modest pounds : one hears of women buying 
a single share merely for the privilege of attending an 
annual meeting of the Company, to see and hear the great 
adventurer who had conceived the enterprise. Rhodes 
himself was away in Africa when this excitement began, 



THE CHARTER 139 

busy with Cape politics and with preparations for the pioneer 
expedition ; but the sudden curiosity about his personaHty, 
so httle known to the general public, only increased with 
his absence. When he next returned to London, he came 
not a suppliant but a dispenser of favours : politicians 
consulted him, society worshipped him, and, what he cared 
for most of all, he had become the talk of the busman and 
the working-man. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PIONEERS 

Vast as were the powers sanctioned by the Charter, they 
had yet to be made good when Rhodes returned to South 
Africa in August 1889 ; for the Company was merely 
permitted to administer territories and exercise privileges 
it might acquire by its own exertions. Having gained the 
approval and support of the Imperial factor, Rhodes's next 
object was to carry South Africa, and especially the Dutch 
of South Africa, with him. This desire to associate the 
Dutch with his enterprise was, as we have seen, no sudden 
impulse, but the result of a long and consistent course of 
policy, dating further back even than his saying to Jameson 
in 1878, that the Dutch were the coming race in South Africa 
and that it was hopeless to run the country without them. 
In his Bechuanaland policy he had proved his sincerity, and 
since then, in his comparatively rare excursions into poUtics, 
he had drawn closer the Hnks between himself and the 
Bond. Both in the House and at the Paarl, where he had 
been invited to address a Bond meeting, he had spoken 
strongly in favour of their poHcy of agricultural protection, 
and had supported a great irrigation scheme in the Hartz 
Valley for the benefit of the farmers. He had fore- 
shadowed, much to their delight, his own Glen Grey poUcy, 
when on a Registration Bill he had attacked the liberaHty 
of the Cape franchise law to uneducated natives. He had 
spoken in favour of Hofmeyr's motions for religious educa- 
tion in the schools and the aboHtion of Sunday trains, and 
in return had received aid from Hofmeyr in defeating a 
proposal to tax the diamond industry, and a glowing eulogy 
from him during the election of 1888 as a staunch friend 

140 



1 



THE PIONEERS 141 

to the Dutch cause. This alliance had recently been 
strengthened by a passing estrangement between the Bond 
and the Transvaal. The era of through-railways had begun ; 
and it had become a vital matter to the Cape farmers no 
less than to the merchants at the ports to have cheap and 
rapid transport for their goods and produce to the Johannes- 
burg markets. But Kruger, with his desire to free himself 
from dependence on Cape ports and to draw all his supplies 
from Delagoa Bay or some port of his own on the east 
coast, had put every obstacle in the way of the Cape policy. 
He refused to allow a railway to come into his country from 
the south, and even persuaded the Free State to reject an 
agreement for a line through Bloemfontein to the Vaal ; he 
would have nothing to do with a South African conference 
on railways and customs, and insisted on keeping up a high 
tariff on agricultural products from Cape Colony. Rhodes 
supported the Bond in every endeavour to concihate 
Kruger and leave him every loophole for a compromise. 
But even the Bond became indignant at this poor return 
for their loyalty to Kruger's people in 1881, and passed 
resolutions of protest against his opposition to the Cape 
railway extension and his prohibitive tariff on Cape produce. 
The very Dutchmen at the Cape, who in 1884 had been 
willing to let Bechuanaland go to the Transvaal, in 1889, 
so the Governor reported, were quite prepared to see the 
British sphere extended to the Zambesi ; and Hofmeyr, 
then most favourable to the Transvaal claims, now declared 
himself in favour of Rhodes's Chartered Company, whereas, 
" had Kruger fulfilled my expectations and fallen in with 
my advice, Rhodes and I might have agreed to differ." 

Rhodes naturally took full advantage of these favour- 
able dispositions. It had originally been intended that as 
Managing Director of the Chartered Company he should be 
assisted by a local board in South Africa, and he himself 
was very anxious to secure prominent Dutchmen to sit on 
this board. He offered the chairmanship in turn to Sir 
Henry de Villiers, the Chief Justice of the Cape, and on his 
refusal to Hofmeyr. At first Hofmeyr was inclined to 
accept, and was empowered to do so by a special resolution 
of the Bond, but, his ingrained distaste for pubHc responsi- 



142 CECIL RHODES 

bility reasserting itself, he thought better of it and refused. 
The local board then fell to the ground and Rhodes carried 
on the work unaided. But he secured very wide support 
for the Company by getting as many South Africans as 
possible to take a financial interest in it : he brought out 
125,000 of the shares for disposal in South Africa and found 
no difficulty in placing even more than these among the 
Dutch as well as the EngUsh colonists. 

He soon reaped the first-fruits of this policy. Part of 
his bargain with the Home Government and an integral 
element in his advance northwards was the extension of 
the railway beyond Kimberley, and he set to work arranging 
for it as soon as he returned to South Africa. Using as his 
intermediaries Hofmeyr himself and Sivewright, a British 
member of the Bond, he concluded, on the very day the 
Charter was granted in London, a favourable agreement 
with the Cape Ministry, who agreed to take over and work 
the first section of the new hne to Vryburg directly it was 
out of the contractors' hands. The work was put through 
with unexampled speed, and the Chartered Company, in 
addition to the increased transport facilities so valuable for 
their own purposes, derived some profit from this arrangement 
with the Cape and conferred a benefit on the colonial traders 
and farmers. 

His next business was to arrange for the occupation of 
the country over which the Charter had given him such 
large prospective powers. His gold -digging rights under 
the Rudd concession extended over the whole of the vague 
dominions claimed by Lo Bengula, including Matabeleland 
itself and the territory occupied by the tributary Mashonas, 
the whole bounded by the Zambesi on the north and by 
the Portuguese possessions on the east coast. It was out 
of the question to venture into Matabeleland itself without 
a large army, but the land inhabited by the gentler Mashonas 
offered a more favourable field ; so Mashonaland was the 
goal decided upon. But even for this there were still 
difficulties with Lo Bengula. The abhorred vacuum at his 
court had never been satisfactorily filled since Thompson's 
departure, and afforded plenty of scope for the intrigues of 
rivals and the chief's hesitations. When Lo Bengula gave 



THE PIONEERS 143 

Rudd his concession in 1888 he never anticipated that it would 
be made the excuse for the ambitious imdertaking conceived 
by Rhodes : he thought a few white men would come and dig 
holes in the ground for gold, not that a regular armed expedi- 
tion would be sent into his country to settle in townships with 
all the appurtenances of European civilization ; and when 
he found he had given away more than he bargained for he 
began to deny that he had given anything. Though shrewd 
in small matters he had httle knowledge of European 
business methods or of the real purport of legal documents, 
and as Mr. Maguire said of him, " he had an extraordinary 
dislike to come to a definite decision upon any subject, 
coupled with extreme unwiUingness to say No/' The 
Grobler and the Moffat treaties and the Rudd concession, 
mutually exclusive as they were, were probably regarded 
by him merely as convenient methods of fobbing off trouble- 
some visitors. So now he persisted in " den3dng the road " 
to any expedition proposed to carry out the Rudd conces- 
sion. Once more Jameson was called upon to talk him 
over. Jameson arrived with Dr. Rutherfoord Harris at the 
same time as a deputation from the Queen, composed of a 
military band and the three tallest of her Life Guards to 
announce the Charter to Lo Bengula and advise him to 
put his trust in the new Company. Impressed by this 
magnificence the chief once more gave way. At an indaba 
attended by Jameson and Moffat he agreed that Rhodes's 
agents might enter Mashonaland to seek for gold and 
establish tents, stores and sheds as required, and that he 
would then indicate to them what land they should be 
entitled to occupy. But he might change his mind again, 
so Rhodes had every motive for haste in equipping and 
starting his expedition. 

The only known route to Mashonaland was by the old 
Missionaries' road through Tati into the heart of Matabele- 
land and thence by Lo Bengula's " royal road " through 
Inyati to the Mashona hills. In the present disposition of 
the Matabeles it seemed foolhardy to send an expedition 
through their country unless it were backed by an im- 
posing military force. But this meant an expense the 
Company could ill afford. Their total capital was only a 



144 CECIL RHODES 

million, half of which was ear-marked for railways ; and 
the Imperial officer who was consulted said he would require 
2500 men for the job and that the cost would be Httle short 
of that total capital. On the other hand, failure and a 
disaster at the outset, owing to an inadequate expedition, 
would spell ruin to the whole Chartered pohcy. Various 
other plans were discussed, but all had to be rejected as 
unsatisfactory ; and Rhodes was almost in despair. 

In this despondent mood he came into the breakfast- 
room of the Kimberley Club a few days before Christmas. 
He looked vaguely at a young man seated at a table by 
himself and was just passing him when he recalled his face 
and came to sit down beside him. The young man was 
Frank Johnson, then only twenty-three, who had just 
arrived from a seven months' trek in the north on behalf 
of the Bechuanaland Exploration Company and was going 
off that night by the mail train for Cape Town. He had 
previously visited Lo Bengula, against whom he had a 
grievance, and had some concessions in Mashonaland. 
Rhodes soon began to pour out his woes to Johnson, and 
told him of the extravagant proposal made to him for an 
armed force of 2500 men. " Two thousand five hundred 
men is absurd," said Johnson, " why, with 250 I could 
walk through the country." Rhodes went on eating eggs 
and bacon and then suddenly burst out with, " Do you 
mean that ? " " Yes." " How much will it cost ? " 
" Give me four hours, and I'll let you know." By noon 
Johnson had brought his calculations to Rhodes : 179 
pioneers, a troop of poHce and 150 natives would do the 
work, and the cost of their pay, food and equipment and 
that of making the roads required would be £89,285 : los. 
" Good," said Rhodes, " I accept the offer, and you shall 
command the expedition." But to his disgust and 
astonishment Johnson refused point-blank to serve under 
the Chartered Company, and went off that evening to 
Cape Town. Five days later he got a telegram from 
Rhodes to meet him next morning at the Cape Town 
station. " Oh, here you are," said Rhodes, as he came 
off the Kimberley train, and the two drove off to the top 
of Adderley Street, where Johnson paid and dismissed the 



THE PIONEERS 145 

hansom — for Rhodes never had any money about him — 
and walked up and down Government Avenue. " Every- 
body tells me you are a lunatic," began Rhodes, " but I 
have an instinct you are right and can do it," and he again 
pressed him to take command of the expedition. Finally, 
on the understanding that he should not act as a servant 
of the Company but work as an independent contractor, 
Johnson agreed for a cheque down to enlist and equip the 
pioneers, make a road and hand over Mashonaland to a 
civil government in nine months' time. " That's all right," 
said Rhodes, " I'll give you that cheque. Now let's get 
some breakfast at Poole's." After breakfast Rhodes told 
Johnson to draw up the draft contract, — he would have no 
lawyers interfering — took him to his friend Sivewright to 
look through the draft, and gave him a cheque for £20,000 
on account. 

The question of expense for the Company had thus been 
satisfactorily settled, but the danger of disaster was not 
yet averted, for no alternative to the risky road through 
Buluwayo had been suggested. To some of Rhodes's 
advisers the danger of a conflict with the Matabeles was no 
objection : the Matabeles, they argued, would have to be 
suppressed sooner or later, and the sooner the better. 
Happily saner counsels prevailed. The proposed route 
became known, and several of those acquainted with the 
ferocity of the Matabeles pointed out the serious risks 
involved. Among others, Mackenzie wrote to Lord Salis- 
bury and Lord Knutsford to say that, opposed though he had 
always been to the Charter, he did not wish to see a disaster 
befall the Company, and " could not bear to think of all 
those fine young Enghshmen being speared some night." 
But the advice which finally diverted Rhodes from this 
foolhardy route came from one who had more claim to 
speak about Lo Bengula's dominions than any other 
European. 

Frederick Selous was then a man of forty in the prime 
of Hfe and vigour. For twenty years he had been a mighty 
hunter in Matabeleland and Mashonaland and also north 
of the Zambesi ; in veld-lore and in knowledge of the natives 
he was unrivalled ; he knew every track in Lo Bengula's 



146 CECIL RHODES 

country and was that chief's trusted friend ; he shared 
Rhodes's love of the Dutch and throughout South Africa 
was famed for his chivalrous and sunny spirit His book 
of sport and travel had reflected this spirit, and by its 
attractive descriptions of Mashonaland had helped to en- 
courage the interest at home in Rhodes's quest. He had 
first met Rhodes ten years before, when he came to tell 
him of his brother Herbert's death in Central Africa, and 
had then shown him quills of gold obtained from the native 
workings in Mashonaland. During the Charter negotia- 
tions in London he had again met him and urged him to 
settle the country permanently. Rhodes had said to him 
then, " I shall soon have a job for you," and in January 
1890 summoned him to Kimberley to discuss routes. 
Selous at once warned him against the Buluwayo route, 
which would only lead to bloodshed and disaster, and 
suggested an alternative way, avoiding Matabeleland 
altogether, through Tuli on the Limpopo, and thence north- 
wards straight up through Mashonaland itself. Dense 
bush at the outset and numerous rivers to cross would be 
a bar to rapid progress, but these disadvantages would be 
more than outweighed by the comparative safety of the 
route. Rhodes, not an obstinate man when he saw good 
reason against his plans, was convinced by Selous, and 
persuaded him to guide the expedition by the way he 
proposed. Selous thereupon went off on a flying visit to 
the Zoutpansberg, to consult an old hunter well acquainted 
with the country, and while there heard rumours of a project 
which made it more than ever imperative for Rhodes to 
despatch his expedition promptly. 

Ever since the Grobler treaty he had dreaded being 
forestalled by the Boers from the Transvaal. He knew 
that many of them cast longing eyes northwards and that 
the London Convention had put no explicit obstacle to the 
fulfilment of this desire. In September he had already 
been scared by the rumour of a Boer trek into Mashonaland 
and had at once sent the Imperial Secretary a letter 
characteristic of his cavalier methods. " The report as 
to Boers squatting," he writes, " may of course be incorrect, 
but you will soon learn the correct facts and if true you 



THE PIONEERS 147 

must instruct the police to expel them. If not the game is 
up. You cannot allow a single Boer to settle across the 
Limpopo until our position in the north is secure." Selous's 
report was even more alarming. A burgher named Bowler 
was organizing a trek to take up a concession he claimed in 
north-east Mashonaland and preparations were said to be 
well forward. Sir Henry Loch, Robinson's successor as 
Governor and High Commissioner, protested to Kruger 
against any such plan, and went to confer with him at 
Blignaut's Pont in March 1890, taking Rhodes with him. The 
President was not in the best of tempers, for he came fresh 
from a stormy meeting with malcontents at Johannesburg, 
who had torn down and trampled on the Republican flag, 
and he was well aware that the policy of a trek northwards, 
which his rival Joubert openly favoured, was popular with 
many of his burghers. But he was really much more 
anxious to obtain control of Swaziland and thence gradually 
make his way to a port on the east coast, and knew that in 
the London Convention Loch held a trump card, as Rhodes 
called it, that might be used against this plan ; so he was 
ready for concession. On obtaining from Loch some rather 
vague assurances about Swaziland he promised Rhodes not 
to interfere with the Charter and to damp down the trek. 
A few months later Hofmeyr was sent up to clinch the 
bargain ; a formal agreement was signed recognizing the 
interests of the Transvaal in Swaziland, while Kruger 
renewed his undertaking not to interfere in Lo Bengula's 
dominions. 

Meanwhile the pioneer expedition was getting under 
way. Besides Johnson's 179 pioneers destined for settling 
in the country, a force of British South Africa Pohce 
had to be enrolled to accompany them and keep order 
afterwards. Though Johnson was mainly responsible for 
choosing the settlers, Rhodes laid down the conditions for 
their recruitment as well as for that of the poHce, and took a 
personal interest in the men selected. He insisted that the 
ranks were to be open to Dutchmen as well as Englishmen, 
and that every man in both forces must be inured to hard- 
ship and adventure, amenable to discipline and ready to 
turn his hand to some trade or business. He himself went 



148 CECIL RHODES 

to Basutoland to buy ponies, and trustworthy men were 
commissioned to choose recruits and buy more horses in 
likely centres. For the pioneers Nicholson brought from 
Haenertsberg in the northern Transvaal men who had 
come from all quarters of the globe to rough it at those 
primitive diggings ; the Johannesburg contingent under 
Lieutenant Mandey included Bowden and Wimble, heroes 
of the cricket field, and Schermbriicker, descendant of an 
Eastern Province pioneer. One raw Yorkshire lad, who 
could not persuade any recruiter to take him, dogged 
Rhodes's footsteps till his persistence was rewarded. 
Among those from Cape Colony, Natal or the Free State 
were Jack Spreckley, Chester Masters, Grimmer, Inskip, a 
boy of nineteen who passed himself off as twenty-one and 
is now a director of the Company ; Bowen, Neumeyer and 
Coryndon, who soon showed his mettle as administrator 
of Barotseland ; the Burnetts, George and Ted, matchless 
scouts and trackers ; a couple of Nesbitts, a well-known 
Cape name ; Johnson's partners Heany, a Virginian, and 
Borrow, Hoste, a Union Line skipper. Roach, the gunner, 
an Irish V.C. and a naval middy, now an admiral. There 
were three parsons, the Jesuit father Hartmann, Canon 
Balfour and Surridge ; a doctor, Tabiteau, besides lawyers, 
builders, tailors, butchers, bakers, engineers, miners, 
farmers and ranchmen. Early in May this likely lot of 
young men, numbering 184 altogether, full of courage and 
the spirit of adventure, had assembled at the trysting place, 
Mafeking : here they were equipped with Webley revolvers 
and rifles, breeches and tunics of corduroy, army boots and 
gaiters, felt wide-awakes and waterproof overcoats. Their 
pay was to be 7s. 6d. a day, and at the end of the journey 
each was to receive fifteen gold claims and a 3000-acre 
farm. They were divided into three troops under Heany, 
skipper Hoste, and Roach, with Johnson, the dashing 
young contractor of twenty-three, at their head. 

A twenty days' march from Mafeking, which served to 
weld this heterogeneous crowd into an orderly body, brought 
them to Macloutsie on the northern border of Bechuanaland. 
Here they found the British Bechuanaland Police, who were 
to watch the Matabele borders while they advanced, and 



THE PIONEERS 149 

five troops of the Chartered Company's new poUce who were 
to accompany them. The poHce were under the command 
of Col. Pennefather of the Inniskilling Dragoons, with 
Forbes, Heyman and Keith Falconer as troop leaders, 
and Sir John Willoughby of the Horse Guards as staff- 
officer. Rhodes was once reproached for having filled up 
the ranks of the pohce with too many Englishmen from 
home, and he answered that, with all his love of colonials, 
he had to admit they were not so good at discipline as men 
from a more settled country : nevertheless there was a 
good sprinkling of colonials, Enghsh and Dutch, in the 
pohce also. Here, too, they found 200 of Khama's natives 
under his brother Radikladi, to act as scouts and road- 
cutters, and also Selous, to guide them, Jameson, with 
Rhodes's power of attorney, and Colquhoun, to be the first 
administrator. Selous and Jameson had just returned from 
a final visit to Lo Bengula to ask him to renew the " promise 
of the road " which he had previously given ; but the king 
had veered round once more. " I am tired," he said, " of 
Rhodes ' mouths ' and will do nothing unless Rhodes, * the 
great white king,' comes up himself to ask me." However, 
as Rhodes could not go, he and Jameson resolved to risk 
Lo Bengula's displeasure and, acting on their rights under 
the concession and on previous promises of " the road," to 
proceed with the expedition. 

Lord Methuen, deputed by Sir Henry Loch to inspect 
the pioneer column, gave them leave to go after three 
weeks more drilling and preparation, and on June 27, 
1890, the start was made from Macloutsie. Selous had 
determined on Mount Hampden in the north of Mashona- 
land, distant 460 miles, as his objective. As far as Tuli 
he had already cut the road, but there the difficulties 
began. For half the distance the course lay across low 
swampy country, thick with mopani brush, through which 
every yard of road had to be cut. Five rivers in succession 
had to be crossed, and any one of these in flood might have 
held up the column for months. Besides its physical 
difficulties, the coimtry was most favourable to ambush 
from an enemy, who could easily have approached the 
column imperceived through the bush or taken up a 



150 CECIL RHODES 

commanding position on one of the numerous granite 
kopjes rising out of the low ground. Nor was the danger 
of attack remote : twice, before the pioneers had left the 
low country, messages came from Lo Bengula ordering 
them back, and his warriors were known to be eager to 
make an example of the intruders. In such country an 
attack in overwhelming numbers by the savages might 
have been disastrous to a force reduced to little more than 
400, after detachments of police had been left behind at 
Macloutsie and Tuli, encumbered besides with ninety ponder- 
ous waggons and a travelling saw-mill. Fortunately the 
march discipline was good and precautions were duly observed 
at every halt, while in Selous they had a rare guide. Each 
day he went ahead with the Bechuana scouts and one of 
the three troops of pioneers to cut the road nor ever 
once led the column astray. But even he began to be 
anxious after Lo Bengula's second message, for it seemed 
as if the low country would never end. At last, after some 
six weeks of this work, riding well in advance, he descried in 
the distance the long-hoped-for pass leading up to the high 
veld. Naming it Providential Pass, he rode back with the 
good news, and by August 15 had brought the whole column 
safely on to the high open country, where with their field- 
guns and maxims the Europeans were more than a match 
for any number of savages. By September 11, without a 
single casualty, they had reached the site named Salisbury 
after the Prime Minister.^ The goal had been attained, a 
good road had been made to connect Salisbury with civiliza- 
tion, and forts to guard the communications had been 
thrown up at Victoria near Providential Pass and Charter, 
all well within the nine months agreed upon by Johnson. 
Even a relay postal service was organized, the first use to 
which it was put being to send an express letter to Rhodes 
announcing the column's safe arrival, which reached 
Macloutsie in five days. " When at last I found that they 
were through to Fort Salisbury," said Rhodes, " I do not 
think there was a happier man in the country than myself." 

1 Salisbury is south of Mt. Hampden, Selous's objective, but he had 
left the column on another errand when they arrived there and decided to 
go no further. 



THE PIONEERS 151 

Rhodes, to his great disappointment, had been unable 
to accompany the column. Detained by a pohtical crisis 
at Cape Town, he had been gazetted Prime Minister of the 
Colony a few days after the pioneers left TuU. " If I could 
quit that responsibiUty," he told the Dutchmen at the 
Paarl, " no man would be happier than myself, because 
I can then go and Uve with those yoimg people, who are 
developing our new territories. The hfe is better than 
that of receiving deputations, whilst it has all the romance 
which attaches to the development of a new country." 
But at the end of October he escaped from Cape Town and 
came up country with Sir Henry Loch. At Vryburg he 
attended the opening of his new section of railway, only 
begun that year, and in his speech recalled his last visit 
there five years before, when Warren had called him " a 
danger to the peace of the country." Travelhng thence 
by road, he paid visits to Montsioa at Mafeking and Khama 
at Palapye on his way to Macloutsie. True to his policy 
of interesting the Dutch population in the new country, 
he had brought with him two Cape Dutch members of the 
Assembly, one of whom, De Waal, has left a Hvely account 
of this and another journey he took with Rhodes. Major 
Leonard, then in command of the pohce detachment left 
at Macloutsie, has also written a graphic description of 
the impression made on him by the great man. Sitting 
opposite to him at lunch, writes Leonard on the first day, 
" I saw a substantial organism, slow in his movements, 
deliberate in his manner and phlegmatic in his temperament. 
A big, heavy-looking, carelessly dressed man, not unhke a 
Dutch farmer, with an awkward slouching figure and a duU 
rather expressionless face, who talks in a curious dreamy 
way, as if he was half asleep, and was taking no interest 
in what he was saying, but was thinking of something 
totally different . . . with Rhodes I made no headway, 
and my conclusion is that his admirers have overrated 
him." Next morning Rhodes hung about the camp, taking 
in everything, " but our conversations were only trivial 
commonplaces ; either he would not or I could not get 
him to talk . . . but I am beginning to think he is very 
deep. For under that dull exterior, which is but a mask. 



152 CECIL RHODES 

he is continually taking in all around and about him . . . 
his command of temper and faculties wonderful." This 
dawning conception of Rhodes 's depth was strengthened 
by an incident next morning, when the great man suddenly 
demanded the major's two best corporals to go with him 
to Tuh. Leonard objected that this would leave him 
short of N.C.O.'s. " N.C.O.'s, N.C.O/s," murmured Rhodes 
vaguely. " What are N.C.O.'s ? " Leonard explained, and 
added that troopers would do as well for Rhodes's purpose. 
" No, I prefer corporals and I must have them," Rhodes 
snapped out in a quick decided way ; " his whole manner 
had changed and he was quite another man. It was only 
momentary, a mere flash in the pan ; then relapsing into 
the dreamy, dull expression and shaking his head in a 
semi-pathetic kind of way he turned to Lange (his secretary) 
and said, ' They must be good men or Leonard wouldn't be 
so anxious to keep them.' " In the evening Rhodes gave 
a taste of his oratory. After a diill official speech from the 
High Commissioner, " up rose the Colossus refreshed with 
wine or possibly by the subject nearest his heart . . . 
certainly he was hke a man transformed. No longer that 
slouching gait and in place of the heavy eyes, orbs full of 
meaning flashing with a dangerous gleam that betrayed a 
fixity of purpose, strength of will and a spirit that would 
do or dare anything, he stood upright and erect, speaking 
weU and to the point [about the northern expansion]. At 
first he talked very slowly and methodically as if he was 
weighing each word with a balance ; but soon warming 
to his subject ... he spoke fervently and earnestly yet 
slowly and carefully as the man in authority." Finally 
after three days, in which they " only talked of trivial 
things, and I did not even once induce him to touch on 
present or future poUcy," the major sums him up as 
" dogged, determined to a degree and tenacious to the 
last gasp ; once he gets hold of an idea he will never let it 
go till he has attained it. In fact he is tenacious even to 
obstinacy and inclined to petulancy if he cannot have his 
way . . . powerful more than pleasant . . . sheer brute 
force of will and rugged genius of mind." 

The unfortunate Governor had an experience of this 



THE PIONEERS 153 

petulancy and obstinacy. Rhodes had made up his mind 
to visit his pioneers in Mashonaland in spite of all Loch's 
arguments that, as Prime Minister of the Cape, he had no 
business to go wandering off into an unknown country, 
where he might be massacred by savages or held up for 
months by swollen rivers. His reply was that he had not 
come on this tiresome journey merely to see the British 
Protectorate, but his own protectorate up north ; and the 
utmost concession he would make was that he would re- 
consider the matter at Tuh : and thither he drove off in 
a pet at dead of night. Here he at last set foot on his 
own land ; but the rainy season was beginning and the 
Governor's warning about swollen rivers bore fruit. Though 
" our horses," he admitted, " are fat and strong ; we healthy 
and in sound spirits ; our provisions more than enough ; 
we must turn here," he decided, " we cross the Shashi and 
the Crocodile, we travel down the Transvaal via the Blaaw- 
bergen and Zoutpansberg, pay Oom Paul a visit and return 
to Cape Town." 

On a journey hke this Rhodes was at his best. He 
loved the freedom of the veld, and to gain it was ready 
to put up with any of the discomforts of travel. In the 
worst circumstances he remained cheerful, even when a 
lion was pursuing him in his pyjamas or when the transport 
had broken down, and they all seemed lost in the low 
country. " Well," he said on that occasion, " here we are 
in a dark wild world. What will it avail us now to upbraid 
Johnson with having deceived us with the road ? What 
lies before us is to decide what to do, and if we don't 
make that decision now, the delay may result in our 
catching fever. . . . Come, speak your minds and let us 
devise a plan." Once when travelhng on a crazy coasting 
steamer infested with beetles and cockroaches, " Well," he 
said, in answer to his companion's shrill complaints, " I 
cannot say I like them, but as I have had many a worse 
time than this in my life, I don't worry myself much about 
such minor discomforts " ; and then as the grumbles still 
went on, " Oh, my good friend, take the world as it is. . . . 
How silly to be afraid of such harmless Httle things ! Why, 
I treat them like flies." " Looking at the comparative," 



154 CECIL RHODES 

as he called this rough philosophy, enabled him to go 
through much worse trials than a few beetles in a steamer- 
cabin ; and he expected those about him to take the rough 
with the smooth as philosophically as himself. Once, 
relates his Boswell, De Waal, he handed over the party's 
last bottle of whisky to a poor fever-stricken pioneer they 
found stranded by the wayside, and on De Waal's angry 
remonstrances added as a further gift his companion's 
favourite pony and professed to be astonished at De Waal's 
resentment. But his elephantine sense of humour at 
others' expense was redeemed by the saving grace of being 
able to see a joke against himself. " Come back ; too 
many cooks spoil the broth," roared out Rhodes as De Waal 
rushed forward officiously to help a man unloading horses 
at Beira : but a few minutes later, when the man got into 
difficulties, " Nonsense," he said with a guilty smile, " go 
off and help him." At times, as he rode along, he would 
disconcert his companions by hour-long bouts of silent 
reflection, when they could not get a word out of him : 
then suddenly he would wake up from his abstraction 
and begin to talk, garrulous as a child, of people he had 
met, of his poHtics and his ambitions or of his vague 
philosophy of life, and, like a wilful child, urge and tease 
them into disputation and argument. 

But let some affair in which he was interested crop up, 
and the wilful child at once vanished to give place to the 
shrewd, hard man of business. When he gave an order, 
it was sharp and there was no gainsaying it ; and his sudden 
gusts of wrath were terrible. Once when his Cape boy had 
not brought round his cart in time, Leonard describes him 
as raging like a lunatic ; the boy was to be arrested and 
given no food, and " he kept on alternately abusing the 
boy and repeating the order." Then, when the storm had 
had its effect, calm would succeed as suddenly. And he 
could interrupt any pleasant jaunt to attend to business. 
On this journey he stopped at Pietersburg to interview 
Adendorff and Barend Vorster, two Boers who claimed to 
have a concession from Chibe, a minor chieftain in Mashona- 
land, and were organizing another trek. They thought to 
bluff him into paying them compensation to give up their 



THE PIONEERS 155 

claim, but he refused to be bled and told them he would 
give them nothing until he had verified their rights ; and, 
as it happened, in the following year he obtained conclusive 
proof from Chibe himself that the concession was worth- 
less. He visited Johannesburg to discuss the cyanide 
process and his interests in the Gold Fields : " the great 
man's visit was a great success," reports his agent, " and 
I have never seen him in better form or temper " owing to 
the success of his trek. When he arrived at the outskirts 
of Pretoria he was disgusted to find a pompous reception 
awaiting him, with high officials in state carriages and a 
guard of honour to escort him into the capital. Here he 
took coffee with the President, but at this interview appears 
to have met his match. He tried, according to Kruger's 
version, to put into practice his theory that you can make 
a deal with any man, but signally failed with this wily 
antagonist. " We must work together," began Rhodes, so 
Kruger's version runs ; *' I know the republic wants a 
seaport : you must have Delagoa Bay." " But the harbour 
belongs to the Portuguese," objected Kruger, " and they 
won't hand it over." " Then we must simply take it," 
was the reply. " No," said the President, " I can't take 
away other people's property. If the Portuguese won't 
sell the harbour, I wouldn't take it, even if you gave it 
me : for ill-gotten goods are accursed." There is obviously 
some foundation for this account, for Rhodes had the 
question of Delagoa Bay much on his mind at this time,^ 
and may well have sounded the President with a view to a 
» deal : and a cynical disregard of Portuguese susceptibilities 
was not ahen to his methods. But the old President rather 
overdoes his virtuous indignation, considering his readiness 
only six years previously to annex a portion of Bechuanaland, 
which he had expressly engaged not to do by the recent Con- 
vention of London. At any rate the conversation must have 
ranged over other subjects, though this is the only topic 
recorded by Kruger. He had just signed the Swaziland Con- 
vention and probably renewed to Rhodes his assurance that he 
would not allow his countrymen to meddle with the Charter 
rights. Rhodes at least professed himself well satisfied. 
1 See below. Chap. XIII. p. 198. 



156 CECIL RHODES 

Kruger undoubtedly meant to fulfil his promise, but 
some of his burghers were difficult to restrain. Adendorff 
and Vorster, in spite of their talk with Rhodes, persisted in 
their intentions, and in March 189 1 inserted advertisements 
in the papers inviting volunteers to found a republic in 
north-east Mashonaland. This Banyai trek, as it was 
called, alarmed the Colonial Office as well as the Chartered 
Company ; and, after a flying visit home by Loch and 
Rhodes, the Queen issued a proclamation in April declaring 
a protectorate over Lo Bengula's dominions and warning 
trespassers that they would be treated as enemies. And 
now Rhodes began to reap the advantage of his conciliatory 
policy to the Cape Dutch. Du Toit, the former fire-eater 
of the Bond, who had instigated Kruger's abortive 
Bechuanaland proclamation in 1884, had been entirely 
won over to Rhodes's views. A few years before he had 
demanded " a united South Africa under its own flag," but 
now he sounded a very di^erent note. " Let us not ignore," 
he wrote, " the guidance of Providence. God has given us 
England as a guardian, a more considerate one than Israel 
found in Pharaoh of old." At this juncture, with a cousin 
of Hofmeyr's, he was employed in organizing Dutch opinion 
both in Cape Colony and the Transvaal against the trek, 
and, as a set-off to Adendorff's scheme, enlisting Boers to 
settle in the new country on Rhodes's own terms. The 
official support of the Bond was even secured. Immediately 
on his return from his visit to London, during which he 
had been invited to Windsor Castle, Rhodes went to 
address the Bond Congress at Kimberley. Referring with 
ingenuous satisfaction to the " consideration he had received 
from the politicians of England and to the expression of a 
desire by Her Majesty herself that he should meet her and 
have the honour of dining with her," and pointing to the 
" extraordinary anomaly it would have been considered in 
the past, that one who possessed the complete confidence 
of Her Majesty herself should have been able to show that 
at the same time he felt most completely and entirely that 
the object and aspirations of the Afrikander Bond were 
in complete touch and concert with a fervent loyalty to 
Her Majesty the Queen," he drew the moral that there was 



THE PIONEERS 157 

nothing incompatible between his own aspirations and their 
ideal of a united South Africa. In another speech, and in 
an open letter to the secretary of the Bond, he declared that 
the Chartered territories were held by him merely as a trust 
for the Cape and South Africa generally, and that all South 
Africans prepared to acknowledge the Company's authority 
were welcome. He had already given an earnest of his 
freedom from race prejudice by including Dutch lads as 
well as English among his pioneers, and so felt justified in 
appeaHng to the old Bondsmen as fathers : " Your young 
men, because they are your young men, have gone up 
sixteen hundred miles, have slept in their boots every night, 
and have felt that they would be murdered at four o'clock 
every morning : oh, yes ! every one said so, from the 
President of the Transvaal downwards. . . . And now 
what has happened ? . . . Mr. Adendorff and Mr. Barend 
Vorster and Mr. Du Preez say they are going to take the 
results of the labours of your sons. . . . When these gentle- 
men say that they are going to take from my young men their 
rights and dispossess them of the results of their labours, 
then I confess I lose my temper ; and I tell you to-night 
that if they continue with it, and if these people will not 
accept our rule and law, then there will be a difference 
between us." " My young men," " your young men," it 
was all one to Rhodes : he spoke and felt with the same 
affection for all the fine lads who had added more homes to 
England. 

After the pubUcation of a letter signed by Hofmeyr 
discountenancing the trek, most of the volunteers melted 
away, leaving only a few score hot-heads under a Colonel 
Ferreira to end the scheme in ridicule. At the end of June 
this vaUant band approached the drift of the Limpopo 
opposite TuU. It so happened that Jameson had just 
arrived there, and he knew how to deal with them. Their 
leader Ferreira was arrested on the Tuli side and sent back 
to parley with his followers : he was told to explain to 
them that their concession was so much waste paper, but 
that any of them who chose to enter the country on the 
Company's terms were free to do so. The raiders' bouncing 
spirit soon evaporated at the sight of the police maxims, 



158 CECIL RHODES 

and they turned to the more profitable business of seUing 
their surplus meal, tobacco and salted horses to the 
troopers : some even joined the police or took farms under 
the Company. Ferreira and his secretary were retained 
as prisoners on parole, and soon induced their gaolers to 
take shares in the Mashonaland Agricultural and Supply 
Syndicate founded on the spot chiefly for the benefit of the 
promoters. Rhodes was never more troubled with raiders 
from the Transvaal, but, true to his word, did all in his power 
to encourage the settlement of Boer farmers. He sent up 
Van der Byl and several leading Dutch agriculturists to 
inspect and report on the country to their neighbours, and 
later encouraged a number of Boer families to take up a 
block of farms in the promising district of Melsetter in 
the east of Mashonaland. And he never veered from this 
policy. In fact, ten years later, when we were at war with 
the Transvaal, one of the grievances against him of an 
Enghsh transport rider was that he flooded the road with 
the waggons and spans of oxen of Boer refugees " who had 
been in arms against us a few weeks before." 

But though all danger from the Transvaal was thus 
averted, things had not gone too weU with the pioneers 
during their first year in the coimtry. The Portuguese, 
whose claims must be reserved to the next chapter, had 
caused a good deal of anxiety ; while serious transport 
difficulties and the enormous expense of the administration 
had been the source of much discontent. At first when 
news came of the pioneer column's success there was a 
rush to the new country. Intending settlers and pro- 
spectors, who had been waiting at Macloutsie and Tuli, 
began pouring in ; transport riders began to ply their trade 
with waggon-loads of stores. Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, who 
had been given charge of the Company's transport and 
supply, had arranged for large reserves of food to be 
collected at TuU and an energetic agent to forward them. 
But even in the most favourable circumstances the diffi- 
culties of transport were great. Until the disputes with 
Portugal were settled, Salisbury's sole base of supplies was 
Cape Town or Port EHzabeth, nearly 2000 miles away ; 
and of this 2000 miles 1000 beyond railhead at Vryburg 



THE PIONEERS 159 

consisted of bad roads, over which all supplies had to be 
brought by ox-waggon at a cost of £60 to £80 a ton. And 
the circumstances were not favourable, for the rainy season 
of 1 89 1 was one of the worst known : all the rivers were 
in flood and the drifts impassable for months, during 
which no supphes came through at all. The result was 
that the whole population of settlers, scattered round the 
country on farms or mines, were in very serious distress. 
They could obtain meat and a poor kind of Kafhr-corn 
from the natives, but flour, groceries and the commonest 
luxuries were almost unobtainable. A whisky and soda, 
for example, cost los. 6d. at Salisbury, and a sixpenny pot 
of jam sold for £^ ; as for agricultural implements and 
heavy mining machinery needed for developing the country, 
they were not to be had at any price. The settlers had 
other grievances. The farms allotted were disappointing, 
and the Company's mining regulations, entitling it to 
50 per cent of the scrip of any newly formed company, 
were regarded as a strong deterrent to mining enterprise. 
The pioneers on the whole stood the test of hardship well, 
but many of the later arrivals, especially those fresh from 
England, were loud in their complaints. " Many of them 
thought," said Rhodes, " that a fortune was to be made 
in about a week or a month ; but they found a bare country 
whose future must depend on the energy of its first occu- 
pants, and that a race out from home and a race back would 
not in any part of the world give one a quarter of a miUion 
of money." 

From the Company's point of view also radical reforms 
were needed. Colquhoun, partly on account of the diffi- 
culties with Portugal, had raised the police force to a 
strength of 700, a crushing burden on an undeveloped 
country ; and the total cost of administration for the 
first year came to a quarter of a million. The settlers' 
complaints, which gradually permeated to England, the 
failure to find gold in any paying quantities, and the 
great cost of administration were having a serious effect 
on the Company's credit. The directors at home were in 
despair and were continually imploring Rhodes to send 
them news of gold discoveries ; £1 Chartered shares, which 



i6o CECIL RHODES 

had started at a premium of 275 per cent, fell below par ; 
and " then," as Rhodes said, " undoubtedly came a true 
period of depression. The condemnation of the home 
papers could only be compared to their previous undue 
sanguineness." One step Rhodes took at once to remedy 
the evils. In July 1891 he superseded Colquhoun and 
gave a free hand as administrator to Jameson. This was 
an ideal choice. Jameson had courage and driving power, 
devotion to Rhodes's interests, and a wonderful tact in 
dealing with the rough lads in the country. " He is getting 
more and more popular every day," wrote one of the 
pioneers to Rhodes. " If you had searched for twelve 
months I am sure you would not find a more able man 
and so thoroughly suited to the position. If only he had 
been in power from the start." He immediately reduced 
the police from 700 to 100, and for a small retaining fee 
persuaded the settlers to volunteer for service when needed, 
and by this and other economies soon brought down the 
annual expenses from the quarter of a million to £40,000. 
But, in spite of this improvement, it was full time for the 
master's eye to survey his domain, when Rhodes was at 
last able to visit it, a year after the pioneers had reached 
Salisbury. 

His presence in the coimtry was like a glorious burst of 
sunshine on the winter of its discontents. He came by 
Beira, bringing horses and natives to work in Mashonaland, 
in spite of objections by the Portuguese officials. Pushing 
through the marshy fly-belt of the Pungwe, having somehow, 
as it was currefttly reported, " found a means of squaring 
the tsetse-fly," he travelled on to Salisbury at his usual 
hghtning speed, eyes and ears all open to everything. At 
Umtali, while his horses were resting, every grumbler of 
the place came to him with his tale of grievances ; and 
though nothing was altered in the state of affairs, his sunny 
presence sent every one away contented. He went to the 
hospital, not to see the patients, for " if I were ill," he 
remarked, " I shouldn't like to be stared at," but to give 
the nurses a cheque for expenses and promise them a medical 
library from England, and left declaring thafif these ladies 
could live at Umtali it was absurd for any man to grumble. 



THE PIONEERS i6i 

Further on the faithful De Waal is allowed to choose a site 
for a farm and have it measured out forthwith by the 
Surveyor-General. " I had just been speaking to my friends 
in the waggon," Rhodes tells him, " about the grandeur 
of the place, and I told them that I was sure you would 
not pass it without desiring a slice of it." At Salisbury 
more grumblers come to see him. Their main grievance is 
the dearth of provisions : " Well," says Rhodes, " I know 
that when the rivers were full the waggons could not cross, 
but I could not help that. You certainly cannot expect 
to be already provided with roads, telegraphs, bridges, 
post-carts, etc. etc., all within the short space of twelve 
months. But if you wanted food, you had plenty of beads, 
linen, etc., to change for food in the Kaffir kraals as we 
did on our way up. . . . No, your agitation has not arisen 
from want of food, but from something else ; it is want of 
liquor that displeases you." He dealt in less cavalier 
fashion with remediable grievances, such as unsatisfactory 
land grants and the 50 per cent mining regulation. This last 
was a pet nostrum of Rhodes's, for he believed with some 
reason that a postponement of all charges on diggers and 
prospectors until they had proved their ground and could 
float a company, was in their interest ; but he was open to 
argument and agreed to reduce the Company's share in 
hard cases. But of far more use than his promises and his 
lavish gifts of money to the scores of deserving and un- 
deserving cases of distress were his straight talks, his 
practical advice, his intense belief in the country, and his 
cheery optimism, " always looking at the comparative." 
The settlers felt that he was one with them when he talked 
to them about their farms and their fencing, inspected their 
mines and found them good, and snubbed Lord Randolph 
Churchill, then touring through the country, for his doubts 
and his aloofness. He was specially interested in the 
Zimbabwe ruins as evidence of a former civilization and 
prosperity, made friends with the natives, and Uke another 
Joseph had storehouses erected against times of scarcity. 
Then, when his time was up, he posted back to Vryburg 
by every available means of conveyance — oxen, mules, 
horses — covering the last 625 miles in seven days. The 

M 



i62 CECIL RHODES 

whole round journey from Cape Town and back took him 
barely more than two months ; but in that time he had 
restored the confidence of every one in the country. " It 
is quite a different Mashonaland since you came," wrote 
one of the pioneers, " for now every one is hopeful." 
Thereafter the settlers had many more trials and hardships 
to undergo, but in the worst times they never despaired, 
because they had learned that they always had their 
founder watching over them and ready to help. In this 
and succeeding visits he implanted in them that absolute 
trust in himself, the memory of which was still hvely, when 
Lord Selborne travelled through the country sixteen years 
later and Rhodes himself was dead. In him, writes Lord 
Selborne, they had one " who was in complete touch and 
sympathy with them, who was always accessible, always 
kindly. ... So long as he Hved they had a friend in their 
midst. ... Of his memory they always spoke in terms of 
deep affection." 



CHAPTER XII 

RHODESIA 

When the Charter was granted, the idea of the Government 
was that the philanthropists of the British South Africa 
Company should spend their resources on developing un- 
explored tracts of South Africa, while the Crown should 
exercise considerable control over their proceedings. Theo- 
retically the Crown had large powers of control, for the 
Company could not conquer or administer any territory 
without its explicit consent intimated by Order in Council 
or proclamation of the High Commissioner, and all relations 
of the Company with other powers had to be conducted 
through the Foreign Office. But in practice the control 
was very slight. No provision had at first been made for 
an Imperial officer specially to watch and report on the 
Company's proceedings, and, in the absence of such super- 
vision, the Company's officials might well embark on a 
course of action, from which there was no receding and for 
which the nation was bound to accept responsibihty. The 
danger of such an occurrence was more than once illustrated 
in the first few years of the Company's existence. 

One of the expedients whereby the Government hoped 
to retain influence over the Company broke down from the 
outset. The three life-directors, the Dukes of Abercorn 
and Fife and Mr. Albert Grey, had been insisted on for their 
unblemished social and political position as a guarantee 
against any undue preponderance of Cecil Rhodes and his 
South African friends on the Board. The Duke of Abercorn 
proved a dignified and excellent chairman, and the Duke 
of Fife pleased the shareholders by telling them more than 
once that theirs was the only company of which he had 

163 



i64 CECIL RHODES 

consented to be a director ; Albert Grey was indeed a 
man of the noblest ideals, of a tact which amounted to 
genius and of great administrative abiUty : but all three, 
with the rest of the Board, succumbed at once and irre- 
trievably to Rhodes's dominating personality. He was the 
only director who knew what he wanted and how to carry 
it through, and when he was not there the rest were all at 
sea and ready to send for him on any emergency. In fact, 
as long as he lived, whether on the Board or off it, Rhodes 
was the South Africa Company. " We are in the dark 
here," writes Grey to him at a crisis in the Company's 
fortunes, " but I have the fullest confidence in the wisdom 
of any move which you and Jameson may agree in thinking 
the right one. ... Do whatever you think right. We will 
support you whatever the issue." In South Africa he was 
of course supreme. He was not only managing director 
out there, but had the Board's power of attorney to cover 
his actions on their behalf, and, owing to the breakdown 
of the negotiations with Sir Henry de Villiers and Hofmeyr,^ 
the scheme of a local board, which might have exercised 
some check on him, fell through. The Imperial Govern- 
ment soon had to adjust itself to the facts and to recognize 
that in dealing with the Chartered Company they were 
dealing with Rhodes. And he was not an easy man to deal 
with. 

The Pioneer expedition into Mashonaland, of which we 
have already traced the fortunes, was really only a small 
item in Rhodes's plans for the Chartered Company. 
Bechuanaland and Mashonaland, ever since the days 
when he had dreamed his dreams at Warren's headquarters, 
he looked on only as stepping-stones to the region of the 
Great Central Lakes, and had formed his ideal of a great 
British dominion through the centre of Africa stretching 
from Cape Town to the Mediterranean In the terms of 
the Charter he had taken care to leave free scope for these 
ambitions, for, though the Company's field of operations 
was limited on the south, the east, and the west, it had no 
boundaries on the north. 

When he was arranging for the Charter he had already 

^ See Chapter XI. p. 141. 



RHODESIA 165 

obtained a vantage ground beyond the Zambesi. Since the 
death of Livingstone in 1873 at Chitambo, near Lake 
Bangweolo, Scottish missionaries had been spreading the 
gospel in that region, and the African Lakes Company, in 
alHance with them, had estabhshed trading factories on Lake 
Nyassa and in the Shire Highlands. But the Arab slave 
raiders from Zanzibar had long regarded this region as a 
favourable ground for their business and were in constant 
conflict with the missionaries and the Company. These 
conflicts had almost reduced the Company to bankruptcy, 
and when Rhodes was in London in 1889 he was told by 
Major Lugard, fresh from an expedition against the raiders, 
that their suppression could only be secured at a much 
larger cost than the Company could afford. It looked as 
if this advance post of British enterprise would have to be 
abandoned, imless the Government would undertake the 
task of protecting the traders and missionaries ; but though 
Lord Salisbury was anxious that British influence should 
not entirely disappear from this region, he was at a loss 
for the funds. Rhodes, however, was ready to step into 
the breach. He entered into negotiations, not finally 
concluded till 1893, with the African Lakes Company for 
the purchase by the Chartered Company of their good-will 
and stock-in-trade. This was to give him the necessary 
financial and commercial interest in the development of 
the country. He then turned to the Government and 
offered, on condition a British protectorate were declared 
over the Lake Nyassa district and the Chartered Company 
were allowed to administer the rest of Central Africa, to 
provide for a definite period £10,000 a year for the upkeep 
of the protectorate. This arrangement, so favourable to 
the Government, was at once accepted by Lord Sahsbury. 
A protectorate was declared over Nyassaland in 1891, and 
Sir Harry Johnston was sent out in the dual capacity of 
Government Commissioner in the protectorate and admini- 
strator in the Company's sphere. The Chartered Company 
paid the £10,000 for five years for the upkeep of the poHce, 
and Rhodes, out of his own pocket, contributed a further 
£10,000 to carry on war against a pecuharly turbulent slave- 
chief, Makanjira. Johnston gradually suppressed the slavers, 



i66 CECIL RHODES 

and by a small but efficient force of Sikh police ensured 
security for life and property in both his spheres ; steamers 
were placed on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, British justice 
was administered in consular courts, and settlers were en- 
couraged on the Shire Highlands. In 1895 the Company took 
over the direct administration of their districts and made 
very large profits by the trading business acquired from 
the African Lakes Company. 

Rhodes also acquired a footing for the Company further 
west. Early in 1889 Lewanika, titular chief of Barotse- 
land, a large undefined territory, stretching from the 
southern border of the Congo state to the north bank of 
the Zambesi, learning of the Moffat treaty with Lo Bengula, 
applied also to come under the Queen's protection. Lord 
Knutsford refused the application at the time, but in the 
following year a trader named Ware obtained a comprehen- 
sive concession from Lewanika over his dominions. This 
concession was bought up by Rhodes and subsequently 
confirmed by further concessions, and ultimately the 
Government recognized Barotseland as well as the Lakes 
district as within the Chartered Company's sphere. 

But before the boundaries of the Company's domains 
in either of these districts or even in Mashonaland could be 
finally settled Rhodes found himself in conflict with two 
foreign powers, Germany and Portugal. Of these Germany 
was more easily disposed of. Up till 1890 the extent of 
German East Africa had never been clearly defined, and 
claims were put forward to the whole country between 
Lakes Nyassa and Tanganjdka as far as Lake Bangweolo. 
Included in this tract was the Stevenson road connecting 
the two first-named lakes, which had a sentimental interest 
to the British people for its association with Livingstone, and 
also the tree near Lake Bangweolo where the great mission- 
ary breathed his last. In 1890, however. Lord Salisbury 
negotiated with Germany the treaty which was to settle 
once for all the points of difference between the two nations 
in Africa, and determine the boundaries of South- West Africa 
and German and British East Africa and the protectorate of 
Zanzibar. Lord Salisbury made the mistake of not consult- 
ing the Cape Colony as to interests which concerned them 



RHODESIA 167 

directly or indirectly in the proposed treaty, and was far 
more concerned in making a satisfactory deal about 
Heligoland and Zanzibar than with any sentimental 
considerations about Livingstone's grave or Stevenson's 
road. Rhodes not only had a real feeling for historic 
associations but was naturally unwilling to part with 
territory claimed by the Chartered Company ; so he asked 
Grey to urge their rights on Lord Salisbury. Grey met 
with a cold response and telegraphed out to Rhodes that 
the Stevenson road was in danger. No answer came, but 
some weeks later an announcement appeared in the papers 
that the Chartered Company's agents had erected two new 
forts on the Stevenson road, Fort Fife and Fort Abercorn. 
Meeting Rhodes later Grey asked him the meaning of these 
mushroom forts. " Oh," said Rhodes with a chuckle, 
rubbing his hands together, " I knew they could not give 
up a fort named after a member of the royal family " ; ^ 
and he was right. The treaty fixed the German boundary 
just short of the Stevenson road, leaving to the Chartered 
Company this vital communication between the two lakes 
and all the country westwards. 

The Portuguese claims were more far-reaching. After 
their discovery of South Africa in the fifteenth century 
they had made sundry settlements on the east and west 
coasts at Angola, Delagoa Bay, Quilimane and Mozambique. 
These settlements had never been entirely abandoned, and 
a treaty was stated to have been made in the seventeenth 
century with a mythical Emperor of Monomatapa, on 
3vhich they founded a right to Mashonaland. ' But this 
treaty was not given prominence or acted upon until after 
the scramble for Africa had begun in 1880, when the 
Portuguese, hitherto content with a few coast settlements, 
began to make the most extravagant claims to the interior. 
They not only asserted a right of continuous dominion 
across Africa from Angola to Mozambique, which would 
have included Barotseland, the Nyassa region and the 
whole course of the Zambesi, but also stated that their 
coastal territory from the mouth of the Zambesi to Delagoa 
Bay extended westwards to Gazaland and Manicaland and 

^ The Duke of Fife was married to a granddaughter of the Queen. 



i68 CECIL RHODES 

included Mashonaland itself. The former claim had actually 
been recognized by France and Germany in 1886 and had 
nearly been accepted by England two years later. ^ Acting 
upon it in 1889 an adventurous Portuguese Major, Serpa 
Pinto, had made a raid into the Shire Highlands, slaughtered 
some of the natives who rehed upon our protection and 
formally annexed the country ; and for a long time the 
Portuguese authorities put every possible obstacle in the 
way of the African Lakes Company, whose only access to 
the interior was by the Zambesi and Shire rivers. The 
Portuguese Government had protested at once against the 
Moffat treaty and the Rudd concession, and had tried to 
forestall Rhodes by sending roving bands under half-caste 
Capitaos Mors to distribute Portuguese flags and terrorize 
the native kraals in Manicaland, Gazaland, and on the 
eastern outskirts of Mashonaland. The most notorious of 
these buccaneering adventurers was a Goanese called 
Gouveia, or Manoel Antonio de Souza, who had founded a 
semi-independent native state to the east of Manicaland. 
But negotiations for a settlement had been going on during 
1890, and three weeks before the pioneers reached Salisbury 
a convention had been signed to delimit the respective 
spheres of England and Portugal. It was satisfactory to 
England in respect to Nyassaland, where the British 
interests were recognized ; a favourable arrangement was 
also made for the lease of a quay to the Lakes Company 
at the Chinde mouth of the Zambesi, recently discovered 
by Rankin, and for free navigation on the waterways ; but 
Rhodes discovered, much to his indignation, that most of 
Barotseland and the whole of Manicaland were ceded to 
Portugal. He wrote angry letters to everybody whom he 
held responsible for it, bidding them " drop this wretched 
treaty." After a good deal of abuse of the Portuguese, 
" I do not think I am claiming too much from your depart- 
ment," he added to a Foreign Office official, " in asking 
you to give some consideration to my views . . . and that if 
you have any regard for the work I am doing, you will 
show it by now dropping the Anglo-Portuguese agreement." 
The trouble was that Rhodes, concentrating all his 

^ See Chapter X. p. 134. 



RHODESIA 169 

attention on his own views, was apt to pay too little heed 
to views relevant to other parts of the Empire. It was 
pointed out to him on this occasion that if we were too hard 
on Portugal, there might be a revolution there and in Spain 
also, and that a Spanish Repubhc might render the supply 
of provisions for Gibraltar difficult. It had been just the 
same with regard to the treaty with Germany. One of 
those interested in British East Africa had written com- 
plaining that there was not enough co-operation between 
Rhodes's Company and Mackinnon's I.B.E.A., and that 
Germany stood to gain in the negotiations by this disunion ; 
whereas if Rhodes could have thought of the islands of 
Manda and Patea, off the East African coast, as well as 
the Stevenson road, England might get both. But he 
would not see it. He could think of other parts of the 
Empire when he had leisure, but allowed nothing to stand 
in the way of his own immediate object. This impatient 
method had its risks, but it accounts for a great deal of 
Rhodes's success in getting what he wanted. He once 
wrote to a friend : " The story of the importunate widow is 
the best in the Bible." 

Fortunately the Portuguese themselves relieved him of 
his anxiety about this convention by refusing to ratify it in 
an outburst of indignation at the concessions they were 
themselves called upon to make. So the pioneers were 
able to stake out further claims. In 1890 the only tangible 
sign of the Portuguese occupation of Manicaland was a 
small fort at Macequece on its eastern border. Before the 
pioneer column had actually reached Salisbury, Jameson, 
taking Colquhoun and Selous with him, had left it to view 
their proceedings. He found that Umtassa, the paramount 
chief of the country, did not recognize the Portuguese 
claims, and concluded with him a treaty which practically 
amounted to a British protectorate and a gift of all minerals 
to the Company. Two months later the Portuguese brought 
up strong reinforcements and occupied Umtassa's kraal, 
but were all caught napping there by Captain Forbes and 
thirty of the B.S.A. police, who disarmed the rank and file 
and took prisoners the redoubtable Gouveia and two other 
high Portuguese officials. The capture of Gouveia had a 



170 CECIL RHODES 

great effect on the minds of the natives, whom he had 
oppressed, and helped the Company in their peaceable 
settlement of the country. Selous then went off to make 
treaties with other chiefs further north, and Dennis Doyle, 
on behalf of Rhodes, was sent to get a concession from 
Gungunhana, the Chief of Gazaland, to the south of Manica- 
land. But here the Portuguese were on the alert ; and 
when Jameson, after an adventurous journey of twenty-five 
days by river and jungle, came to confirm the treaty he 
found the Portuguese in possession and the Company's 
ships, sent up the coast to meet him and to convey arms 
to Gungunhana, under arrest. But after two more 
skirmishes at Umtali, the Company's new settlement 
founded near Umtassa's kraal, and at Macequece, in which 
they were beaten, the Portuguese came to terms. By the 
treaty of June 1891 the spheres of the two nations in Central 
Africa were defined as in the abortive convention of the 
previous year, while the Company gained Barotseland and 
the greater part of Manicaland, leaving Macequece and most 
of Gazaland to the Portuguese. Of still more importance to 
the Company were the transport facilities granted. The 
navigation of the Zambesi and Shire rivers was declared 
free, and the prospect of a new and much shorter access to 
Mashonaland was obtained by the opening of the port of 
Beira and the promise of the Portuguese to build a railway 
thence to Umtali and Salisbury, a distance of only 380 
miles as compared with the 2000 miles from Cape Town. 
This treaty gave Rhodes all he could reasonably ask, for he 
had always said that he would be quite content to leave 
the low-lying coast districts to the Portuguese, as long as 
he held the healthy uplands of the interior for his people. 
It also restored the ancient friendship and alliance between 
the two nations, while in Africa the Company ever 
afterwards had the most cordial relations with the 
Portuguese. 

Even after this settlement with Portugal the Company's 
position was still unsatisfactory in one respect. Although 
they had the right to dig for minerals in Mashonaland, they 
had no explicit power to deal with the land. It is true this 
had hitherto made no practical difference : farms had been 



RHODESIA 171 

allotted to the settlers and Salisbury had been cut up into 
stands for sale ; and Rhodes had cheerily spoken of the 
10,000 farms, each of 4000 acres, waiting to be taken up 
by Europeans. Still, the want of title was a defect, which 
might lead to questionings and trouble in the future. One 
Edward Amandus Lippert, a German financier, had 
observed the weak spot and resolved to make his profit 
thereby. He made his way with a Mr. Renny-Tailyour to 
Lo Bengula's kraal and found the king in a good disposition 
for his purpose, for he was still being worried for concessions 
and moreover was becoming anxious at the Company's 
lavish grants of land. Lippert represented himself as the 
disinterested friend anxious to save him trouble, and offered 
to take off his shoulders the burden of assigning to Euro- 
peans any land necessary for their operations, receive the 
rents himself and pay Lo Bengula £1000 down and a 
" globular sum " annually, as Rhodes described it, of 
£500.^ The offer was accepted, and Lippert returned with 
the concession in his pocket to Pretoria to make the best 
use of it he could. He approached Alfred Beit, who was 
his cousin, with a proposal to float a company to develop 
it, and on his refusal hawked it round to others and, when 
told it was valueless by the Chartered Company's agents, 
spoke darkly of the support he had been promised by the 
German Government. 

The news of this concession troubled Rhodes greatly, as 
it might seriously hamper the Company's freedom of action. 
His first inclination, after consulting Sir Henry Loch, was 
to dispute its validity, and he procured the arrest of 
Lippert's accompHce, Renny-Tailyour, as he was travelling 
through Bechuanaland. But on second thoughts his 
natural disposition to a deal reasserted itself, and he made 

^ The wording of the concession is far-reachin-g, " Whereas," Lo 
Bengula is made to say, " large numbers of white people are coming into 
my territories and it is desirable that I should assign land to them . . . 
and appoint some persons to act for me in these respects " ; to Edward 
Amandus Lippert, in consideration of the above-mentioned payments, 
is assigned the sole right for a hundred years " to lay out, grant or lease 
for such period or periods as he may think fit, farms, townships, building 
plots and grazing areas ; to impose and levy rents ... for his own 
benefit ; to give and grant certificates ... for the occupation of any 
farms, townships, building plots and grazing areas." 



172 CECIL RHODES 

several unsuccessful attempts through agents to bring 
Lippert to reasonable terms. Finally he saw the man 
himself and arranged that, after it had been confirmed 
by Lo Bengula, the concession should be bought by the 
Company. The price was no doubt large ; still, it was 
cheap at any price to the Company, whose entire scheme of 
settlement might otherwise have been at the mercy of 
Lippert and a rival syndicate. Wide, however, as were 
the powers granted by Lo Bengula, they were nothing to 
the fantastic superstructure of rights subsequently built 
upon this document by the Company. Rhodes himself, 
though not quite consistent in all his utterances on the 
subject, generally spoke of the land as public property, 
for which he and the directors were merely trustees, and 
warned the shareholders that any profits they might make 
must come solely from minerals. But after his death the 
directors propounded the theory that all the land in Lo 
Bengula's dominions was the Company's private property. 
They had several arguments in support of this view, but 
based it mainly on this Lippert concession, by which at 
most they obtained agents' rights for a hundred years ; by 
that time, too, Lo Bengula himself had long disappeared 
and his country had been conquered on behalf of the Crown. 
This contention, vehemently opposed by the settlers, was 
not finally disposed of till 1918, when the Privy Council 
declared the Lippert concession valueless as a title to 
private property in the land. But nothing in the Privy 
Council judgement impugned the use made of the conces- 
sion at the time it was granted. Rhodes was thereby 
enabled to give secure titles to his settlers and also to use 
the proceeds of land sales to cover purely administrative 
costs.^ 

Lo Bengula had now granted away his minerals and 
land rights ; the only remaining danger to the settlers was 
the presence of Lo Bengula himself and his savage Matabele 
hordes in their immediate neighbourhood. For the first 
three years of its existence the settlement of Europeans in 

1 In their first report the directors estimated the land at their disposal 
at 80,000,000 acres, which, capitalized at 3d. an acre, amply secured the 
shareholders' capital. 



RHODESIA 173 

Mashonaland was a strange anomaly. By the admission 
of the Crown the country still belonged to Lo Bengula, 
and Jameson was sharply called to order by the Colonial 
Office for speaking of troublesome natives he had chastised 
as rebels : in fact, the newcomers were there only on 
sufferance. For Lo Bengula, being an ignorant savage, 
never understood the concessions he had granted in the wide 
sense their legal phraseology might warrant and as they were 
interpreted by the Company, and resented the creation of 
an independent state within his borders. " I thought you 
came to dig for gold," he wrote to the Secretary, " but it 
seems you have come ... to rob me of my people as well " ; 
and he was beginning to find confirmation of his fears 
expressed years before to the missionary Helm : " Did you 
ever see a chameleon catch a fly ? The chameleon gets 
behind the fly and remains motionless for some time, then 
he advances very slowly and gently, first putting forward 
one leg and then another. At last, when well within reach, 
he darts out his tongue and the fly disappears. England 
is the chameleon and I am that fly." But he had no idea 
of giving up his rights without a struggle and continued by 
his own barbarous methods to assert his sovereignty over 
the Mashonas, among whom the settlers were living. Twice 
in 1892 he sent raiding bands of his warriors to punish 
cattle thefts and exact tribute from these unfortunate 
people ; and the raiders carried on their depredations 
under the eyes of the Europeans in the neighbourhood. 
These raids stopped all farming and mining, for the native 
workers fled to their caves in the hills and even the settlers 
in isolated camps felt insecure. As early as 1891 it was the 
common talk in Mashonaland that " until the Matabeles 
are crushed and welded into shape the success of the 
country either as a mining concern or a new market and 
administration will never be accomphshed." Other less 
worthy considerations also had their influence. The rough 
tumbled country of Mashonaland had not proved the 
expected El Dorado either for mining or farming, and longing 
eyes were cast on the more fertile uplands, where the 
Matabeles pastured the largest and finest herds in South 
Africa. Rhodes himself had long seen whither events 



174 CECIL RHODES 

were drifting and at Tuli in 1890 had given this answer to 
a Transvaal Boer who had offered to fight the Matabeles 
for him : " Yes, Mr. Graaff, I shall certainly some day be 
pressed to do as you want me to do, but you must remember 
that I have only the right to dig gold in that land ; so long, 
therefore, as the Matabele do not molest my people, I 
cannot declare war against them and deprive them of their 
country, but as soon as they interfere with our rights I 
shall end their game ; I shall then ask for your aid and be 
very glad to get it, and when all is over I shall grant farms 
to those who assisted me." 

In July 1893 matters came to a head. The telegraph 
hne had been cut near Victoria and Lo Bengula sent an 
impi, partly to punish the culprits, partly to recover some 
cattle stolen from his own kraal. The savages behaved as 
usual — murdering, pillaging and burning round the country- 
side and even within the precincts of Victoria itself. 
Captain Lendy,^ the Company's officer at Victoria, remon- 
strated, but without avail, and Jameson came down from 
Salisbury to deal with the offenders. Jameson was con- 
vinced that the raiders must be given a sharp lesson ; 
otherwise there would be no peace in the country ; and, 
though the Company was hardly prepared for war with 
so formidable an enemy as the Matabeles, he had supreme 
confidence in himself and in Rhodes's support. He tele- 
graphed to him saying that it might be necessary to strike 
a blow at once and march on Buluwayo. Rhodes was in 
the Cape House at the time and scribbled off the laconic 
answer : " Read Luke xiv. 31," ^ to which Jameson replied 
that he had read the verse and that it was all right. Mean- 
while he had summoned the indunas of the impi to an 
indaba and told them plainly that, unless they were off 
the commonage in an hour, he would make them go. At 
the end of the hour Lendy was sent after them with a troop 

^ Captain Lendy had already acquired unenviable notoriety by his 
brutal treatment of N'gomo, a Mashona chieftain charged with theft. 
He had been severely censured by the Colonial Secretary, and should 
have been cashiered. It was certainly unfortunate that the Matabele 
War was opened with this man in a responsible position. 

2 " Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not 
down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet 
him that cometh against him with twenty thousand ? " 



RHODESIA 175 

of police ; though they were already moving off, Lendy 
nevertheless fired and killed some. By this action the die 
was cast : Lo Bengula recalled a strong impi he had sent 
to Barotseland and Jameson began to make his preparations 
for war. 

Nearly three months passed, however, before hostiUties 
actually began. On hearing of the events at Victoria 
Sir Henry Loch took charge of the negotiations with Lo 
Bengula, made Jameson withdraw the claim he had made 
for compensation and enjoined him not to move without 
his permission. Loch was not in an enviable position with 
regard to Rhodes and the Chartered Company. Though 
he had little control over Jameson's actions in Mashonaland, 
his would be the responsibility, if anything went amiss. 
" The danger is," he complained to a friend in England, 
" the Company as soon as they are a little better prepared, 
may bring about fighting, as they can't stand long armed 
and waiting for events with the possible view of committing 
H.M.'s Government in their quarrel. So I am obUged to 
watch both friend and enemy." His relations with his 
masterful Prime Minister made his task none the easier. 
He had a sincere admiration for him, but was not so 
completely under his sway as his predecessor appears to 
have been : and Rhodes hked to be a dictator and resented 
criticism no less from a governor than from anybody else. 
In the previous year Rhodes had taken umbrage at a fancied 
attempt by Loch to curtail the Company's operations, and 
now he strongly objected to any interference by the Imperial 
authorities. To do him justice he took the brunt of the 
work on his own shoulders. Immediately after the Victoria 
incident he ordered the enrolment of men, bought up horses 
in the Transvaal and sent them up to Charter and Victoria ; 
and, to meet the expenses of campaign, sold 40,000 
Chartered shares at a loss. " I was afraid," he told the 
South Africa Committee three years later, " the Doctor 
might have a bad time, and I did sell my interest in 
various things to provide money to carry on the war, 
because I felt that if there was a disaster, I was the only 
person to carry it through." On September 18 he sailed 
for Beira on his way to Mashonaland, telling Loch before 



176 CECIL RHODES 

he left that " the Company asked for nothing and wanted 
nothing." 

Loch, though always made to feel in Rhodes's presence 
the lesser of the two kings in Brentford, stuck manfully to 
his rights. As an old soldier, he realized more fully than 
Rhodes or Jameson the formidable undertaking it might 
prove to conquer Lo Bengula's 15,000 savages with only 
1000 Europeans, and was anxious lest the war should 
spread to the protectorate, for which he was directly re- 
sponsible. With the full support of his chief. Lord Ripon, 
he insisted on satisfying himself about Jameson's prepara- 
tions and plan of campaign before allowing him to stir, 
and, in spite of Rhodes's assurance that the Company 
wanted nothing, strengthened the police force in the 
protectorate with a view to a possible diversion against 
Buluwayo. At the same time he did his utmost to avert 
hostihties by messages to Lo Bengula. The chief himself, 
though he refused any further payments under the Rudd 
concession as " blood money,'' to the end seemed anxious 
to avoid an open rupture ; but after the events of July 
it was impossible for him to restrain the hotheads of his 
tribe. Bands of his warriors still hovered about the out- 
skirts of Victoria, and in October some of the Imperial police 
were fired on by Matabele scouts. The bellicose spirit of the 
settlers and one of its motives is equally plain from the 
terms of the " Victoria agreement," which the volunteers 
called up for service in August required Jameson to sign 
before they would march. By this agreement the lion's 
skin was carved up before he was slain : every man who 
invaded Matabeleland was to receive a farm of 6000 acres, 
valued at £1 : los. an acre if the Company wished to re- 
purchase it for public purposes, twenty gold claims and 
an equal share of all " loot " — the famous Matabele herds. 

With these dispositions on both sides war could hardly 
be avoided. After the firing on the police patrol Loch gave 
permission to Jameson to start. Within less than a month 
the issue was decided. Six hundred volunteers and four 
hundred native auxiliaries, with a good supply of maxims 
and field-guns, marched along the high plateau leading 
from Mashonaland to Buluwayo. After repelling two 



RHODESIA 177 

attacks, on the Shangani and Imbembesi Rivers, of Mata- 
bele forces numbering some 5000, the column entered 
Buluwayo on November 4, 1893. A diversion from the 
south by Goold Adams and the Imperial police materially 
assisted them, and Goold Adams joined them in Buluwayo 
a few days later. Before the volunteers arrived Lo 
Bengula had blown up his royal kraal, no doubt with 
gunpowder received in pa3nnent for concessions, and had 
fled northwards. Major Forbes and Captain Alan Wilson 
were sent with a smaU party in pursuit, but at the Shangani 
the force divided, Wilson being sent across the river to 
follow up the spoor. Thus isolated from the rest Alan 
Wilson's detachment was suddenly attacked by an over- 
whelming number of the king's bodyguard ; Forbes, who 
was also engaged, could send him no help. For some 
time Wilson's fate was in doubt and Rhodes, already at 
the front, hurried up from Buluwayo with reinforcements. 
But it was too late. Wilson and his men, surrounded by 
their enemies, died where they stood like gallant English- 
men, the last man falling only when the last cartridge had 
been spent. Rhodes, who loved his gallant pioneers, was 
deeply affected by the tragedy and glory of this last stand, and 
erected one of his most famous memorials to their memory. 
Save for this, his men came almost scatheless out of the 
brief campaign which gave him the whole of Matabeleland. 
Lo Bengula, harried as a fugitive, did not long survive 
the loss of his country. Two months later news came 
that he had died of small-pox on the Shangani. Barbarous 
and cruel as he was, according to the traditions of his race, 
all the Europeans who met him imite in testifying that he 
had many of the qualities of a great gentleman. To men 
he knew well and trusted, like Selous, he was courteous 
and scrupulous in his dealings. When his yoimg men were 
crying out for the blood of Maguire and Thompson, he would 
not suffer a hair of their heads to be touched. Even when 
the Europeans were advancing on his capital, he set a guard 
to protect the four European traders who had not escaped 
in time ; and they were found safe and sound by the 
Company's forces amid the ruins of the native village. 
It is humihating to feel that he did not always meet with the 

N 



178 CECIL RHODES 

same consideration from the Europeans. He was badgered 
and worried into granting concessions which he barely under- 
stood, and he vainly tried to avert the dangers he foresaw 
from a white settlement. Even at the last, two of his envoys 
to the High Commissioner were killed at the outposts in a 
blundering affray ; and, worse still, two European troopers, 
to whom during his flight he had entrusted a sum of money 
as an earnest of his readiness to surrender, embezzled the 
money and kept back his message.^ No doubt the state of 
society he represented was incompatible with the European 
civilization brought within his boundaries, and the ending 
of the savage Matabele system was a benefit to all Lo 
Bengula's subjects : nor could the raids and massacres 
of his tribesmen have been stopped otherwise than by 
military conquest. Still, in spite of these reasons to 
justify it, and in spite of the redeeming courage of 
Alan Wilson and his men, the mercenary motives that 
inspired many of those who took part in this war 
give it a sordid aspect, which does not redound to the 
national credit. It is satisfactory at least to know that 
Rhodes himself felt a twinge of compassion for the 
" naked old savage," as he called him, deserted by his 
royal regiments at the last and left to die friendless, and 
that he undertook at his own charge the education and 
support of his sons. 

Before the issue of the war was known Rhodes had 
found a fresh cause of grievance against the Imperial 
Government in a message from Loch that all negotiations 
about the settlement of Matabeleland were to be conducted 
by the High Commissioner. In a peremptory telegram to 
the Board of Directors he required them to find out the 
meaning of this message, and demand that the Company, 
having asked nothing of the Government, should be free 
to settle terms with Lo Bengula, subject only to Lord 
Ripon's approval. " I certainly intend to settle the ques- 
tion on South African Hnes," he telegraphed to a Dutch 
friend at the Cape. " I had the idea and foimd the money 
and our people have had the courage to fight without 

1 It is satisfactory to know that this dastardly conduct subsequently 
came to light, and that the two men were sentenced to penal servitude. 



RHODESIA 179 

help from home.^ Surely I should have a voice in the 
final settlement. I feel I can reckon on the people of 
Cape Colony supporting me in this view." He instructed 
Jameson on arriving at Buluwayo to retain the management 
of everything in his own hands for the Company, and told 
him not to allow the Imperial representative to have a say. 
Accordingly Jameson began to allocate farms and to seize 
the king's cattle. But even Rhodes, after his first outburst 
of petulance, could hardly maintain that the Crown should 
have no voice in the settlement, especially when Loch and 
Ripon tactfully assured him that nothing should be decided 
without his consent. He declared Jameson's action to 
be merely provisional, and in a speech to the volunteers at 
Buluwayo warned them that all arrangements about land 
grants must be subject to the High Commissioner's approval. 
Still he could not resist a dig at the " negrophilists of Exeter 
Hall," and talked some arrant nonsense about the opposi- 
tion to the war by a small section in England, which he 
spoke of as " conduct that alienates colonists from the 
Mother Country," and hinted that " it was in the same 
spirit that the Mother Country lost America," ignoring 
completely the wholehearted support given him throughout 
by the Liberal administration and the great mass of 
Enghshmen at home. He was on surer ground when he 
came to giving practical advice to his settlers, and in a 
characteristic peroration illustrated all that was best in his 
own belief and practice. " Many of you," he concluded, 
are going to leave, and we wish them all joy and success ; 
but I must confess that my feelings and sympathy are most 
with those who are going to stay and make this their 
home, and to them I do heartily wish success. I would 
say to these that when afterwards they are alone and 
have afterwards possibly to deal with hardship, let them 
deal with such whilst considering always what I call the 
comparative state : ' Were I not here, where should I be 
and what should I be doing ? ' When you think of what 
you might have been doing elsewhere, many of you will 

^ This is hardly exact. The presence of the Imperial poUce on the 
Dorder and their diversion of a large force of Matabeles, south of Buluwayo, 
materially contributed to Jameson's success. 



'>^/^ 



i8o CECIL RHODES 

find it is a great source of comfort that you have a 
great country that we know with many miles of it 
minerahzed . . . and that there is a fair prospect of many 
of them being of value. Then you have, if you are inclined 
that way, a certain sentiment about knowing that 800 
of you have created another state in South Africa, large 
in extent, with every prospect of being proportionately 
valuable, and that you have put an end to the savage rule 
south of the Zambesi." 

In the end Rhodes had his way about Matabeleland in 
the agreement of May 1894 between the Company and the 
Crown. The whole of Lo Bengula's dominions were treated 
as conquered territory and assigned to the Company to 
govern on the lines of a Crown Colony. The appointment 
of the administrator and his council and of the judges was 
vested in the Board of Directors, subject to the Secretary 
of State's approval : the Board alone could impose taxes 
and customs duties and issue ordinances concurrently 
with the High Commissioner and the administrator in 
council. The Company was free to allocate all land as it 
pleased, subject to two reserves set apart for the natives ; 
and as the successor of Lo Bengula, who claimed the owner- 
ship of all herds, it was allowed to retain all the cattle in 
the country, provided the natives were allowed a certain 
proportion for milking. The Secretary of State and the 
High Commissioner retained the power of veto, but an 
ex post facto veto was no great safe-guard in a country 
still so remote from communication. In effect Rhodes, as 
sole managing director of the Company, became almost 
absolute in the whole territory extending from Bechuanaland 
to the Zambesi. 

In the following year, in recognition of his great work, 
Rhodes was made a Privy Councillor, and all the Company's 
sphere in South Africa, including Mashonaland, Matabele- 
land, Barotseland and Central Africa, received by Proclama- 
tion the title of Rhodesia, whereby formal authority was 
given to a name already suggested by the settlers' affection 
for their founder. Rhodes himself was vastly pleased at the 
personal distinction given to him as Privy Councillor, but 
still more at the title chosen for his country : as he said, in 



RHODESIA i8i 

his shy boyish way, to a friend, " Well, you know, to have 
a bit of country named after one is one of the things a 
man might be proud of/' 

By 1895 Rhodes was at the pinnacle of success and 
glory. A Hfe-time's thought, no doubt, but only six years' 
ostensible work had enabled him to " paint the map of 
Africa red " to a greater extent than had been accomplished 
by the labours of previous centuries. And it was no mere 
painting of the map. Over a large part of this great 
dominion, 750,000 square miles in extent, larger than Spain, 
France and the former German Empire put together, 
order and settled government had been established ; no 
internal or external danger to its peace gave cause for 
apprehension. The railway was being pushed on towards 
Salisbury from Mafeking and from Beira ; Sahsbury, 
Buluwayo and other townships had been put in touch by 
the telegraph Une with the outside world. The even more 
ambitious scheme of the African Transcontinental Telegraph 
Company, almost entirely a creation of Rhodes 's forethought 
and private capital, had begun hnking up the whole of 
Africa from Cape to Cairo and had already reached Blan- 
tyre in the distant Shire Highlands. To secure the 
through route he had begun negotiations with the German 
Government for way-leaves through German East Africa, 
and as a second string had obtained from Lord Rosebery's 
Government a treaty with the Congo State allowing him 
to run the telegraph along the western shore of Lake 
Tanganyika in exchange for the lease of the Lado Enclave.^ 
In Southern Rhodesia farming, stimulated by Rhodes's 
encouragement and his practical help, was already giving 
promise, and gold production had at last taken a favourable 
turn. The pubUc finances were improving and confidence 
in the country was shown by the rapid development of its 
chief centres, Salisbury, Buluwayo, Gwelo and Umtah. 
The cUmate had been proved healthy and fit for white 
men to work in and rear famihes. Already Rhodes's wish, 
" Homes, more homes, that is what I want," formulated as 
he looked over the uplands of Rhodesia and thought of the 

1 Owing to the opposition of France and Germany this treaty was 
never ratified. 



i82 CECIL RHODES 

squalid tenements General Booth and others had shown him 
in London, was being reaUzed. 

Rhodes 's great wealth was no doubt a large factor in his 
success ; and there was an element of truth in the critic's 
envious comment that it was easy for him to attain his 
objects " with your armies and your gold and with all 
the quiet, majestic, resistless advance of an elephant 
through brushwood." He himself never underestimated 
this factor. "If we have imaginative ideas, we must 
have pounds, shillings and pence to carry them out," he 
said to Gordon. But something more was needed. Earl 
Grey, the friend who more than any other could pierce 
through Rhodes's crust of cynicism to the noblest elements 
in him, put his finger on one essential : pubhc spirit. 
Sending him a model in gold of the first Rhodesian mine 
opened for working with the inscription, 

he added, " In Tudor and Plantagenet times men did things 
first for England, then for themselves. Some of our big 
wigs can't believe you act hke this." And Rhodes himself 
knew that even with wealth and pubHc spirit he could never 
have succeeded without the feehng of the people and his own 
persistence. In this matter of the feeling of the people 
he had the true instinct of the great statesman. " We 
went far to the north," he told a Cape Town audience ; 
" we occupied all short of the Zambesi ; we did it by the 
feehng of the people. For after all, even if you have the 
wealth, it is impossible to carry out a conception unless 
you have the feehng of the people with you ; . . . and I have 
foimd out one thing," he added, " and that is, if you have 
an idea and it is a good idea, if you will only stick to it, 
you will come out aU right. ... In those early days every one 
was against me. When I pointed out to the House, as an 
individual member, that the hinterland must be preserved, 
I could not get a vote, I could not get a single vote ; and 
one had to continue at the question in spite of every 
difficulty. I made the seizure of the interior a paramount 
thing in my politics and made everything else subordinate. 
. . . My paramount object weighed with me as supreme." 



CHAPTER XIII 

PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 



For the five years succeeding 1885 Rhodes had, much to 
the disappointment of his friends, taken very httle part 
in the proceedings of the Cape ParUament. Sauer had 
urged him in 1888, as soon as his diamond amalgamation 
was completed, " to give some time and attention to other 
things than mining. I mean of course the poHtics of this 
Colony and the states adjoining — in fact the whole of 
South Africa." But he remained deaf to all appeals. At 
the general election of 1888 he had, as usual, been re- 
turned for Barkly West, but was too much absorbed by 
Chartered business to take his seat in the session of 1889, 
and for the same reason intended to be absent from his 
parliamentary duties during the following year. Early 
in June 1890, however, he suddenly changed his mind and, 
" without waiting to pack his portmanteau," hurried off to 
Cape Town, took the oath and his seat, and threw himself 
into the political fray. 

A desperate attempt by Sir Gordon Sprigg's moribund 
ministry to recover popularity was the occasion of this 
sudden change of plans. In the recent development of 
railway communications attention had been mainly devoted 
to the great trunk lines connecting Cape Town and Port 
Elizabeth with the north, where the best markets for over- 
seas goods and Cape produce were to be found. As a result 
the more recent port of East London and the country 
farmers in the western and central districts of the Colony 
had felt themselves neglected. To remedy this grievance 

183 



i84 CECIL RHODES 

Sprigg proposed a great scheme of railway construction to 
tap hitherto undeveloped districts and link up existing lines 
at a cost to the taxpayer estimated at anything from 
seven to twelve millions. It was a plausible scheme, for 
every Dutch farmer Hkes to have a railway as near his 
front door as possible, and seemed calculated to catch votes. 
But it was extravagant, especially at a time when the 
Cape finances were none too flourishing ; for many of the 
proposed lines would admittedly not be paying. To 
Rhodes this vote - catching appeal was particularly 
obnoxious, for he hated locahsm and did not want the 
colony's resources diverted from schemes of general utihty 
to unremunerative lines in out-of-the-way districts. One 
of Sprigg' s ideas was to connect the newly discovered Indwe 
collieries by a rambhng railway with East London. Develop 
the Indwe coUieries by all means, Rhodes argued, but 
develop them in the most rational way by giving them the 
shortest possible Hne to their best market, Kimberley, 
which would willingly take any amount of cheap colonial 
coal in place of Enghsh sea-borne coal at £8 : los. a ton. 
As for East London, its proper function was to be a mart 
for the rich grain trade of the Free State and the Eastern 
Province, not to compete with Port EHzabeth for long- 
distance traffic ; " but there seems a sort of mania," he 
complained, " when one port has its distinct area, to let 
another port come in and render what by itself is profitable 
unprofitable when shared by two." Sprigg had over- 
reached himself. The Bond farmers, dearly as they would 
have liked their particular railways, are a frugal race and 
were alarmed at the cost ; Sauer and Merriman, the 
financial watchdogs of the opposition, joined forces with 
Rhodes ; and after several defeats in Committee Sprigg 
resigned on July lo. 

At that time the Bond party, led by their great tactician 
Hofmeyr, had the deciding voice in the Cape Parliament. 
In 1879, when Hofmeyr entered Parliament, out of a House 
of seventy-four members, he could reckon on a following 
of about twenty ; in 1884 it had increased to thirty-three, 
and in the last election a few more seats had been gained. 
This result had been attained by infinite patience and 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 185 

much subterranean manoeuvring on the leader's part : the 
tenets of the party had been purged of their anti-British 
bias, so exasperating to colonists of Anglo-Saxon origin, 
and attention had been concentrated on the practical issues 
of Cape pontics. In fact the Bond under Hofmeyr's 
guidance, though still drawing most of its adherents from 
the Dutch population, had become chiefly a country or 
farmers' party as opposed to the commercial interests of 
the towns. But, though so powerful in Parliament, Hofmeyr 
had never had an absolute majority, and without that had 
always declined to undertake the responsibility of forming 
a Ministry. His purpose was served equally well without 
that. Few of his rustic followers were fitted for administra- 
tive duties, so he was quite content to let the more poHtically 
minded Englishmen govern and to turn out their Ministries 
when they ceased to be agreeable to the Bond. In this way 
since 1881 the Scanlen, Upington and Sprigg Ministries 
had successively owed their tenure of office to Bond votes. 
Rhodes himself, though he never enrolled himself in the 
Bond, had been veering more and more to their point of 
view. On his rare visits to the House he had generally 
found himself in the same lobby as the Bondsmen, and 
during the election of 1888 had acted in close concert with 
Hofmeyr, using his influence to induce several of his 
EngHsh friends to win seats with the support of the Bond 
and to get Enghsh voters to support some of Hofmeyr's 
candidates. 

On Sprigg's resignation the Governor sent for Sauer, 
but as he and his friend Merriman could not count on 
Hofmeyr's support, he gave up the attempt to form a 
Ministry. Rhodes was then sent for. His first step was 
to find out if the Bond would be with him : he even offered 
either to serve under Hofmeyr or to give him a place in 
his Cabinet. Hofmeyr declined both offers but gave his 
blessing to a Rhodes Ministry. His followers were equally 
favourable and promised to give the new Ministry fair 
play. Some of Rhodes' s Enghsh supporters in Kimberley 
were not too well pleased at these parleyings with the 
Dutch, but he had a ready answer for the grumblers. " I 
think," he said, " if more pains were taken to explain 



i86 CECIL RHODES 

matters to the Bond party, many of the cobwebs would be 
swept away and a much better understanding would exist 
between the different parties.'* 

He had little difficulty in forming a Ministry. " There 
are no clear Hues of poHtical division in this country," he 
once told the Cape ParHament ; "I do not mean it is a 
question of ' ins ' and ' outs,' but I would ask the House 
to consider whether in so far as public poHcy is concerned 
there are very great lines of difference in forming a Cabinet 
... it would probably be a matter to be settled personally 
or socially." And for settHng matters personally or socially 
he was without a rival. He met Parhament within a week 
of Sprigg's resignation with his Cabinet already formed. 
It contained three supporters of the Bond : himself, Faure 
and Sivewright, the last a clever Scotsman who had risen 
from the Cape telegraph service to a great position as a con- 
tractor, and had won Rhodes's confidence by his business 
capacity and his help in forwarding the Kimberley-Vryburg 
railway. The opposition members were Innes, a highly 
respected lawyer, now Chief Justice of the Union ; Sauer, 
the ablest debater in the House ; and, as Treasurer-General, 
Merriman, a rigid economist of the Gladstone school, witty 
and eloquent, a Rupert of debate. It was hailed as a 
" Cabinet of all the talents " ; but, strong as it seemed, it 
contained within it the seeds of discord. Rhodes may have 
been right in asserting that there were no clear Unes of 
poUtical division in the country ; nevertheless there were 
certain underlying problems which might at any moment 
come to the surface and create profound dissensions in the 
community. One of these was the native question, on 
which Sauer and Merriman held diametrically opposite 
views to the less liberal-minded Bondsmen. Another was 
the rivalry between English and Dutch, never entirely 
allayed and liable to blaze up again at any spark. For the 
time being, however, Rhodes, while incUned towards the 
Bond view on both these questions, was able to exercise 
a moderating influence, and his first Cabinet survived for 
nearly three years. Then differences, both personal and 
political, became so acute that it could no longer hold 
together. 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 187 

The immediate cause of its disruption was Sivewright. 
Rhodes with all his capacity for conceiving great plans was 
growing impatient at the drudgery of working out the 
details, and was only too willing to hand them over to some 
capable subordinate. He found Sivewright, able and not 
too nice in his methods, just the man for this purpose, and 
created some jealousy among the other Ministers by the 
special confidence he reposed in this " brain-carrier of the 
Ministry," as Hofmeyr called him. At the end of 1892 
Innes, Sauer and Merriman discovered that Sivewright on 
his own responsibility, without calling for tenders, had 
given away an important contract to a personal friend of 
his. On being informed of this Rhodes, who was away 
in Europe with Sivewright, cabled his consent to the 
repudiation of the contract, but when he found on his 
return that those three Ministers refused to remain in the 
Cabinet unless Sivewright retired, he could not bring himself 
to dismiss Sivewright. In his dilemma he wrote a letter 
to Hofmeyr that shows the close relationship between the 
two men : "I feel very much ashamed of myself to write 
to you amidst all your trouble [Hofmeyr's father had 
just died] ; but still I will say that I have a Cabinet crisis 
upon me and I need greatly your calm judgment. ... If, 
however, you think I should respect your sorrow and get 
through the difficulty by my own judgment, just say so." 
Hofmeyr came and advised him to send in the resignation 
of the whole Cabinet and then reconstruct the Ministry, 
and Rhodes followed his advice. He himself was anxious 
to give up the lead, as he felt how undesirable it was for 
the Prime Minister to be absent so frequently as he was 
bound to be with his varied calls to London and Rhodesia, 
and offered to serve without portfoho under De Vilhers or 
Hofmeyr. He first made overtures to the Chief Justice, 
arid but for a misunderstanding, this negotiation might 
have succeeded.^ He was equally unsuccessful with Hof- 
mejrr, whereupon he felt obhged to become Prime Minister 
again with an entirely new Cabinet. Its principal members 
were his own predecessor Sprigg, who took over the 

^ For the correspondence between De Villiers and Rhodes see Note 
at the end of the chapter. 



i88 CECIL RHODES 

Treasury from Merriman ; another Scotsman, Laing, who 
succeeded Sivewright ; and his friend W. P. Schreiner as 
Attorney-General. With this Cabinet he carried on the 
government until his own resignation more than two years 
later. 

Rhodes' s dictum about the absence of clear hues of 
poHtical division in the country was well illustrated by the 
presence of Sprigg in his second Ministry. For two years 
they had not been on speaking terms owing to some remark 
dropped by Sprigg in debate and warmly resented by 
Rhodes. They had met over the Kimberley-Vryburg 
railway negotiations of 1889 ; but during the whole of 
Rhodes' s first Ministry Sprigg had opposed his measures 
and attacked him several times for combining the in- 
compatible duties of Prime Minister of the Cape and 
managing director of the Chartered Company. But, though 
Rhodes still retained both posts, Sprigg, an adaptable 
politician, made no difficulty about entering his Cabinet. 
Except under stress of the most violent controversies it 
was difficult for Cape poUticians to remain irreconcilable 
for long. Cape Town society is comparatively small ; and 
most of the legislators belong to one club, where they 
cannot avoid meeting one another on friendly terms at 
the bar or the luncheon-table. The Cape House lent itself 
to tolerance. It was a very cultivated assembly, where 
Latin quotations could be made and appreciated without 
false shame, and where the standard of debate and good 
breeding was high. " Up to the present," Rhodes once 
told his fellow-members, " we have the best men in the 
country in the House," and he set up as an awful warning 
to them " the methods of Austrahan and other colonies, 
where members indulge in vulgar personalities." Vulgar 
personahties were indeed singularly rare in that polite and 
friendly assembly, where oratory was practised as a fine 
art and the roughest knocks were rarely resented or, if 
resented, soon condoned. The members were famiHar with 
one another's peculiarities and proud of them. For flights 
of oratory and debating power the Cape House could bear 
comparison with most British assemblies, when it could 
produce a Merriman or a Sauer, Upington, the Irish orator, 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 



189 



or even Sprigg, a most adroit controversialist : Sivewright's 
triumphant exposition of his railway convention with the 
Transvaal and his defence of his own part in the contract 
scandal are admirable examples of lucid statement. 
Hofmeyr's special bent was for insinuation in the lobbies, 
but when he spoke in the House no one could be more 
conciliatory and persuasive. For comic relief there was 
O'Reilly, the Cape Town Irishman, who fixed on Rhodes 
as the special mark of his buffoonery, and Schermbriicker, 
the genial and swashbuckUng colonel from the Eastern 
Province. In many respects the Cape House of Rhodes's 
day resembled more the House of Commons of the 
eighteenth century than its twentieth-century successor. 
For both were in essence oligarchical and undemocratic 
bodies. The eighteenth - century poUticians in England 
habitually kept a certain measure in attacks on their 
opponents and deUvered them with an air of good breeding, 
since all were concerned in upholding a state of society 
and government favourable to themselves, and had no 
desire, by pushing their quarrels to extremes, to give an 
opening to the lower classes. Both English and Dutch at 
the Cape had the same caste feeling of aristocracy, but in 
their case the lower classes were represented by the 
hundreds of thousands of natives, of whom they were the 
political masters : in their presence they felt bound in 
honour to maintain an attitude of Olympian superiority. 
Rhodes, for example, was in some respects as radical as 
any member of the Assembly, but he stopped short at any 
attempt to tamper with the aristocratic basis of govern- 
ment. He only expressed the thoughts of most of his 
fellow-members when he praised the high franchise in 
Prussia, " a most enormous but necessary protection 
against demagogues, ... a most unpleasant people," or 
when he uttered the unimpeachably Tory sentiment : "I 
wish to preserve the landed classes of the country as a 
conservative element in connection with changes that are 
coming over the country, ... as a bulwark against the 
march of legislation, . . . which is very often hurried and 
mischievous." This spirit of exclusiveness generally makes 
for good manners : and just as in America one looked to 



190 CECIL RHODES 

find the most gracious hospitality and the greatest courtesy 
in the slave-owning South, so, of all the British dominions, 
South Africa with its subject races is the most distinguished 
for these qualities. 

Rhodes himself was quite in his element in the Cape 
House. He understood its ways and its members under- 
stood him. As an orator and a master of words he was 
not pre-eminent, and he was sparing in his utterances, for 
he never spoke unless he had something definite to say. 
Then he talked in a conversational strain, taking the House 
into his confidence and telling them " amusing " stories — 
not always so " amusing " to his hearers as to himself — 
about his own youth and adventures. So, despite his 
awkward manner and his disjointed style, he was always 
listened to willingly for the thought he was laboriously 
contriving to express. During his speeches he was never 
troubled by the buzz of talk of which some members 
ingenuously complained. To these he once administered a 
grim reproof. " If a member, '* he drily observed, " has 
anything to say that is worth saying and worth 
listening to, every one listens to it. . . . When a member 
gets on his feet and hears a buzz in the House, he should 
say to himself that it is clear that what he is conveying to 
the House is not of much importance, and he should then 
either proceed to his facts or sit down/' an utterance which 
recalls Chatham's terse word of advice to a flustered oppo- 
nent : ** Whenever that member means nothing, I advise 
him to say nothing." Rhodes, in his utterances, was 
certainly never guilty of " meaning nothing," though 
their connection with the subject under discussion was not 
always obvious. Sometimes in debate he would interpose 
a long rambUng speech entirely off the point to convey 
some quite irrelevant idea, on which he had been reflecting 
and which he desired to make known to his audience. In 
1892, for example, Sprigg had made a strong case against 
him for not having yet carried out his engagement to extend 
the Hne from Vryburg to Mafeking : in his reply he almost 
ignored the charge and devoted himself to a detailed 
vindication of his northern policy since 1880 and of his 
recent occupation of Mashonaland, concluding with the 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 191 

amusing piece of intelligence that " the honourable gentle- 
man has put the motion on a very suitable day. It happens 
to be my birthday." So engaging a plea naturally proved 
irresistible ; and the House celebrated the auspicious 
anniversary by rejecting Sprigg's motion. They were 
indeed very proud of their Prime Minister: proud of his 
business capacity as the " great amalgamator," proud of 
his Imperial vision and his care, in all his African schemes, 
to put the Cape first ; flattered too by the glory reflected 
on the Colony from the deference paid at home to their 
leading statesman. His personal disinterestedness in Cape 
politics also earned their respect. After he had been in 
ofi&ce three years it was discovered that he and his secre- 
taries between them had cost the Colony no more than 
£527 : 5s. during the whole period. " The country is never 
likely to have another Prime Minister in exactly the same 
position as Mr. Rhodes," said Merriman, then speaking 
from the opposition benches, " for there is not a man in 
the Government who takes less out of the pockets of the 
country and is more modest in his demands." And he 
was liked because he always remained one of themselves, 
simple in his address and mindful of his fellow-citizens' 
chief interests as farmers, miners or traders. Above all, 
he was the first statesman among them to rfierge the 
divergent views of English and Dutch into one common 
outlook as Cape Colonists and South Africans. 

This friendly atmosphere in the Cape Parliament facili- 
tated Rhodes's special methods of government. He was 
once attacked in the House for telling a London audience 
that he proposed running his trans-African telegraph 
through the Mahdi's territories, and expected no difficulty 
about it, "for I have not found in life any one I could not 
deal with." Far from expressing shame at the sentiment, 
he repeated it and further explained his theory : "I have 
invariably found in life that you could either quarrel or 
deal with men ; i.e. you could sit down and argue with a 
man and reason with him or quarrel with him ; but if you 
sit down and reason with men you would invariably find 
that you could settle with people or arrange with people." 
He consistently followed this principle of " sitting down 



192 CECIL RHODES 

and arguing with a man," and was well rewarded by his 
immunity from serious opposition during his five and a 
half years of office. The arguments took different forms 
according to the man he was sitting down with. Barnato, 
as we have seen, he placated by a luncheon at the Club and 
a seat in the House ; Sir Thomas Upington, one of his 
most eloquent opponents, was persuaded to take a judge- 
ship in 1892 ; next year Sprigg and Laing were brought 
into the Cabinet ; Theron, a Bondsman who had opposed 
the Charter, was talked over by Rhodes and in 1894 
proposed as chairman of committees in opposition to his 
former chief. Sir Thomas Scanlen. Scanlen in his turn was 
given an important post in Rhodesia. Some members 
were helped out of their difficulties by Rhodes, and by the 
distribution of Chartered shares others were attached to his 
interests. Of conscious bribery he was no doubt quite 
guiltless, but his wealth and his manifold activities as 
chairman of De Beers and the Gold Fields, as managing 
director of the Chartered Company, and as Prime Minister 
of the Colony inevitably tended to rivet many connections 
and incline a large number of Cape politicians to regard 
his tenure of power as indispensable. He also had a keen 
eye to the value of the press and exercised considerable 
control over a group of South African newspapers : not 
that he dictated their policy, but he was at any rate secure 
of their general support. His general attitude on this 
question is well illustrated by his remark to Garrett, the 
editor of the Cape Times : " I have never inspired an article 
in your paper, or requested that a given hne should be 
taken, but you might at least be careful about facts." In 
Parliament he preferred to settle controversial subjects 
behind the scenes rather than in open debate, and he 
certainly laid himself open to Merriman's charge that : 
'' Parliament was being demoralized by the practice of 
underhand agreement, lobbying and caucuses ... he 
preferred to stand up and take his fighting in the House ; 
"HJie Premier preferred to take it in the lobby." His chief 
adviser and ally in this practice of lobbying was Hofme}^', 
a past-master in the art ; and Rhodes always looked to 
Hofmeyr to keep him in touch with the Dutch party he 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 193 

was so anxious to conciliate. The two men saw one 
another almost daily during the session, riding out in the 
eariy morning over the Cape flats and the mountain slopes, 
or meeting for consultation in Camp Street or Groote Schuur. 
Attacked in the House for his understanding with Hofmeyr 
Rhodes admitted and gloried in the charge. " I will take 
the House into my secrets," he rephed. " I did consult the 
honourable member for Stellenbosch. I consulted him in 
the first place because he represents a large section of the 
people of this country ; in the second place because I 
find his sound judgement of enormous assistance to me." 
As an outcome of this alHance and of these preliminary 
parleyings Rhodes in presenting to the House most of his 
important measures, the Scab Act, the Franchise and 
Ballot Act and the Glen Grey Act, could count beforehand 
on the support of the Bondsmen, whose extreme limits of 
concession he had already sounded and allowed for. It 
was assuredly from no ignoble desire to retain power that 
he pursued this policy : " You and some of your friends 
think I am too subservient to the country party," he once 
told an Enghsh supporter, " but I have great sympathy 
with the Dutch ; they have needs and experiences, which 
we are all, I sincerely think, apt to overlook. I help 
them as far as I can, instead of opposing them. Is not 
that the better way ? It pleases them and it pleases 
me." 

The Dutch farmers certainly never had a Prime Minister 
so soUcitous for their interests. To their great deUght 
three of the Ministers in his first Cabinet could answer 
their members in their own language. Soon after taking 
office he declared that he would not, like most previous 
governments, confine his attention to the ports and the 
carrying trade of the colony, but make the prosperity of 
the farmers and the development of the country's natural 
resources his chief care. He created a Ministry of Agri- 
culture and took great pains to improve the methods of 
that hitherto neglected industry. In place of Sprigg's 
extravagant scheme of railway construction he put forward 
a well-thought-out programme for connecting the central 
farming districts with their markets at small cost to the 

o 



y^ 



194 CECIL RHODES 

taxpayer.^ The colony's orange groves, that were being 
ravaged by insect pests, he saved by the introduction of 
the American ladybird, and he made a beginning of the 
scientific fruit culture, which has since proved so profitable 
to the Cape, by bringing over experts from the fruit farms 
of California to give instruction in the best methods of 
fruit-growing and packing the fruit for export. He im- 
proved the breed of Cape horses by importing Arab stallions 
and developed the export trade of horses to India. He 
saved the colony's flocks and revived the wool trade by 
the drastic provisions of his Scab Act ; and, when on a 
visit to Constantinople in 1894, he persuaded the Sultan 
to let him have some goats of the precious Angora breed 
to cross with the Cape stock, and so improve the quality 
of the goats'-hair, which the colony already exported to 
the value of half a milHon annually. The wine industry, 
which was being ruined by the phylloxera, gave him 
especial concern ; for it was one of the most important 
in the Cape : in fact about a third of the members of the 
House represented vine-growing districts. American vines 
believed to be immune were distributed to the farmers ; 
and Rhodes himself studied wine-culture in France and 
imparted to them the results of his experiences. He also 
tried to improve their export trade. Ever since Cobden's 
agreement with France and the lowering of the duties on 
French wines the Cape wines had lost their market in 
England. To redress the balance Rhodes enlisted the 
support of Gilbey, the wine importer, and tried to persuade 
Harcourt to give a preference to colonial wines, both Cape 
and Australian. But Harcourt, though sympathetic with 
his difficulties, gave no hope of acceding to his request : 
he could not afford the loss to the budget, or the risk of 
antagonizing France, and saw no prospect of a quid pro quo 
in any modification to England's interest of the high 
Australian tariff. Rhodes for his part had no fear of 
protection for farmers. He objected to bolstering up 
" bastard industries," as he called them, not suited to the 
country, and refused to consider tariffs such as Australia 

1 Instead of Sprigg's seven or eight millions the three railways he 
proposed in 1895 were to cost the taxpayer only ;^70o,ooo. 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 



195 



had adopted for this purpose. But tariffs to make the 
country self-supporting and to encourage farming seemed 
to him perfectly legitimate. It was a policy, too, that 
exactly suited the wishes of his Bond supporters. 

But with all his desire to carry the Bond with him he 
never compromised on questions of principle. The Scab 
Act, which took up most of the 1894 session, introduced a 
system of compulsory isolation for flocks infected with 
scab, especially obnoxious to the independent Boer farmers. 
But Rhodes saw that it must be insisted on, if the wool 
industry was to be saved, and though he made many 
concessions on details he stuck to his compulsory clauses 
and carried them. On education also he had strong views, 
which often ran counter to accepted views in South Africa 
and gave him some trouble with the Bond. The university 
system in the Cape was very defective, with its isolated 
colleges for Dutchmen and EngUshmen and a purely 
examining body to grant degrees. The racial question was 
the chief obstacle to reform ; for the Dutchmen clung to 
their special college at Stellenbosch and dreaded amalgama- 
tion. Rhodes's project was to create a real teaching and 
degree-giving university at Cape Town, drawing its students 
from both races and from all states or colonies of South 
Africa : the advantage of such an institution would, he 
beheved, be far-reaching, not least when the students 
returned to their homes, " tied to one another by the 
strongest feehngs that can be created, because the period 
in your life when you indulge in friendships which are 
seldom broken is from the age of eighteen to twenty-one ; 
and they would go forth into all parts of South Africa 
prepared to make the country ; and in their hands this 
great question of union could safely be left." In this 
instance vested rights and racial feehng proved too strong 
for him ; and, though he gave and collected large sums 
for the scheme, he did not Uve to see it fulfilled. He was 
more successful in introducing a welcome change from the 
arid system of judging men's work purely by examination 
results. When a mining school was opened at Kimberley, 
he and Beit offered scholarships for students there, and he 
insisted that the course should include practical experience 



196 CECIL RHODES 

in the mines. " I am entirely sick," he said, " of these 
theoretical things, which end in a flourish of trumpets. I 
want this mining-school to be such that when a lad has 
been there he will go home, not simply with a piece of 
paper in his pocket, but with an offer from a manager of 
a mine for a good situation.'' He was equally determined 
to allow no political influences to interfere with the proper 
administration of the public education. On a vacancy for 
the post of superintendent-general he chose the best man 
he could obtain from Scotland, and, when urged by the 
Bond to appoint an unsuitable candidate of their own, 
replied, " I would rather throw up my position than let a 
man, whom I do not think qualified, educate the young, 
however much I may be urged by local people." 

Even in his dealings with the Transvaal, Rhodes, helped 
partly by Kruger's foolish policy on railway and tariff ques- 
tions, partly by his own skill in diplomacy, was gradually 
bringing the Bond to his view that the Cape must be the 
dominant state in South Africa. He had persuaded the Bond 
to cry " hands off " to the Transvaal and pledged them to 
his own policy in Rhodesia, and, when Sprigg, Laing and 
O'Reilly attacked him for his dual position in the Cape and 
Rhodesia, he found his warmest supporters among their 
members. Hofmeyr went so far as to declare that, though 
" he had hoped that the North could be developed in the 
old Boer fashion, this was proved impossible before the 
Charter. If a man such as the Premier had not started 
the Company, the country would have been colonized in 
a manner very different from what they would Uke. They 
should not, therefore, place difficulties in the Company's 
way. If the interests of the Company and the Colony 
clashed, the Premier would retire from the Government, 
and he was right in this." Where Sprigg had failed he 
succeeded in obtaining from the Free State in 189 1 the 
long desired permission to extend the Cape railway through 
Bloemfontein to the Vaal, and in the following year, by 
means of Sivewright, overcame Kruger's long-rooted objec- 
tion to the further extension to Johannesburg and Pretoria. 
As for Kruger, by his prohibitive tariffs on Cape wine, 
brandy, cattle, corn, fruit and butter he was driving the 






PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 



197 



Dutch farmers of the Cape to look to Rhodes rather than 
himself as then" chief ally. Rhodes even played the 
moderating part when the Bond members raised their 
voice in angry protest against these tariffs. " Do not let 
us lose our tempers," he said, " but maintain a statesman- 
Uke and dignified attitude " ; and he assured them that, 
if they would but have patience, Kruger was bound ulti- 
mately to yield. 

II 

In certain quarters, where Rhodes's " Imperial factor " 
speech had not been forgotten, this strait alliance with the 
Bond was looked on with some misgivings. The Times, 
converted to a belief in Rhodes 's good intentions by the 
Charter policy, was still afraid that he might be a dupe. 
" Mr. Rhodes," it stated, " continually asserts his beUef 
that it will be a British union within the Empire. Mr. 
Hofmeyr intends that it shall be a Dutch union outside 
the Empire . . . he is the older, perhaps the cooler, certainly 
the more experienced of the two. He has been giving 
points ever since Mr. Rhodes's return from England. . . . 
He asks for the equivalent now." But Rhodes was certainly 
not the dupe. He was even gradually weaning the Bond 
from its provincialism and converting it, with the other 
Cape Colonists, to take an interest in the wider questions 
for which he chiefly cared. In fact, he found a good ally 
for this policy in Hofmeyr, always a cautious and enlightened 
supporter of the Imperial connection. But where Hofmeyr 
worked with delicate insinuations Rhodes played his part 
with dramatic directness. Previous Prime Ministers had 
sometimes had occasion to make respectful representations 
to the Colonial Office on the colony's affairs, none before 
Rhodes had ventured, with the almost unanimous approval 
of his fellow-colonists, to assert the right of interfering in the 
general concerns of the Empire. He had not been in office 
a fortnight before he brought up for the consideration of the 
House the treaty just signed by Lord Salisbury with Germany 
for settUng African boundary questions,^ and carried what 
was virtually a vote of censure on the Home Government 

* See Chap. XII. pp. 166-7. 



./ 



198 CECIL RHODES 

for signing such a treaty without consulting the Cape. He 
claimed by this resolution that, as the " dominant state in 
South Africa," the Cape was entitled to a voice in any 
future agreement concerning territory south of the Zam- 
besi, and supported it by a reference to his own successful 
stratagem in forcing the hands of the Government by the 
creation of Forts Fife and Abercom : "I obtained," he 
said, " an arrangement of boundaries, which seemed almost 
impossible, but which showed what could be done by 
making one's voice heard." He set a new precedent, which 
pleased the Dutch, in proposing that the House should 
send a vote of condolence to the Queen of Holland on her 
husband's death. He even undertook to purchase for the 
colony a large tract of territory from a foreign power. In 
1891 the Portuguese were in difficulties owing to the claim 
of an American, M'Murdo, for compensation for the forcible 
seizure of a railway he had constructed from Delagoa 
Bay to the Transvaal border. Kruger was especially 
interested in this railway, as it was the link which was 
to connect his own line from Pretoria with the port at 
Delagoa Bay ; and he hoped, when his own line was 
completed, to have the whip hand of the Cape by control- 
ling a shorter railway connected with a nearer port than 
Cape Town or Port Elizabeth for the Johannesburg traffic. 
Rhodes, however, in 1891 conceived the ambitious idea of 
buying up the whole province of Louren9o Marques from 
Portugal on behalf of the Cape, which would have put this 
railway and all the cards in his own hands. The Portuguese 
finances were not then in a flourishing condition and it 
was hoped that the price might prove a temptation. 
Mr. Maguire, Sivewright and other agents carried on the 
negotiations for several years, and it was no doubt with 
these negotiations in his mind that, when he saw Kruger 
in 1 89 1, Rhodes suggested to him that an arrangement 
might be made between them about Delagoa Bay.^ Ulti- 
mately, however, the Portuguese, whose national pride was 
engaged in retaining their ancient possession, definitely 
refused all offers. 

Still more remarkable was his attempt to establish 

^ See above. Chap. XI. p. 155, and cp. Michel! ii. 94. 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 



199 



direct relations between the self-governing colonies without 
the intervention of the Colonial Office. In May 1891 he 
addressed private letters to Sir Henry Parkes and Sir John 
Macdonald, the Prime Ministers of New South Wales and 
Canada, suggesting that they should all three agree on a 
common fiscal policy. Writing to Macdonald he con- 
gratulates him on the result of the Canadian elections, 
which had turned on the question whether fiscal relations 
should be made closer with the United States or the 
Mother Country, and then goes on, ** between us we must 
invent some tie with our Mother Country that will prevent 
separation ... a practical one, for future generations will 
not be born in England. The curse is that English politi- 
cians cannot see the future." In a postscript he modestly 
explains : " You might not know who I am, so I will say 
I am the Prime Minister of this Colony — that is Cape 
Colony," and expresses a wish to meet him " before stern 
fate claims us." This wish remained unfulfilled, for 
Macdonald died before the letter reached him. But it 
bore fruit. In the following year the High Commissioner 
for Canada sent him, " as one desirous of the unity of the 
Empire," the resolution of the Canadian Parliament in favour 
of colonial preference, and invited him to pass a similar 
resolution at the Cape ; and four years later Rhodes met 
Macdonald's successor in London and tried to arrange a 
reciprocal reduction of duties on Canadian timber and Cape 
wines as a preliminary to a more general policy of preference. 
When the Canadian Government issued invitations for the 
inter-colonial conference at Ottawa, he accepted eagerly on 
behalf of the Cape, and secured the interest of the Dutch by 
persuading Sir Henry de Vilhers and Hofmeyr to represent 
the colony. In his instructions to them he laid down that 
they were (i) to show a friendly feehng with the other 
colonies, (2) to discuss Imperial cable routes, (3) to obtain a 
measure of inter-colonial trade, (4) to consider the payment by 
the colonies of subsidies to the Imperial Navy. At the confer- 
ence Hofmeyr served him well and gave a very practical 
turn to the discussion on cable routes and colonial contribu- 
tions to the Navy. Always with the same idea of drawing 
closer the ties of kinship with the other colonies, in 1893 



200 CECIL RHODES 

this most unconventional of Prime Ministers used Cape 
Government balances to relieve the financial depression in 
Australia. He bought £200,000 worth of Victoria and New 
South Wales stock, then standing at 82 per cent, as a cheap 
and safe investment and " as a public means of showing 
confidence in the two colonies/' and easily persuaded the 
House to endorse his action. 

" The future government of the world is a question of 
tariffs " was an opinion Rhodes was fond of repeating ; 
for he had a great belief in the power of tariffs as an element 
in a bargain. A good illustration of his methods is his 
treatment of the customs at Walfisch Bay. This Cape port 
formed an enclave in German South West Africa and was 
the Germans' most convenient outlet for trade. The Cape 
had always waived the collection of duties there, partly 
for reasons of international courtesy, partly to preserve the 
port as an outlet for German trade, and partly, in Rhodes 's 
time, as he admitted, for an ulterior motive. He was 
anxious to obtain favourable terms from the German 
Government for the extension of his Trans- African telegraph 
through their province of East Africa to Uganda and hoped 
by customs concessions in South -West Africa to dispose 
them to entertain his request. But he had no success. 
" Without putting on these duties at Walfisch Bay," he 
indignantly told the House, " I have been refused to let 
the telegraph go through their territory to civilize Africa." 
" Clap the duties on," shouted Merriman, interrupting him. 
** For two years," continued Rhodes, " they have refused 
for the most paltry reasons, they have refused to allow the 
telegraph to go through their East African possessions. 
They have refused over and over again, so that they are 
not entitled to the slightest consideration." 

He does not seem to have been more successful in a 
singular attempt to influence the fiscal policy of the United 
States. The M'Kinley tariff recently passed in the States 
caused him serious apprehension for its possible effects on 
British trade, and in 1894 he apparently conceived the 
strange idea of communicating his sentiments to the Presi- 
dent of the Senate. His letter is unfortunately not extant, 
but its tenor is apparent from the answer it called forth 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 201 

from Senator Lodge and thirty-three other senators. They 
turned the tables completely on their rash correspondent, 
for, after remarking on " the recent rather astonishing 
communication to the President of the Senate from the 
Premier of Cape Colony," they are moved by the nature of 
its author's business " to suggest another proper exercise 
of this legitimate discrimination. Since the discovery of 
the Kimberley diamond fields less than a quarter century 
ago, diamonds to the value of $175,000,000 have been 
imported into the United States. ... It is estimated that 
the country now absorbs from a third to a half of the annual 
product of these South African diamond mines, which are 
controlled by English investors, who have Umited the 
output, created a trust and practically control the price 
of the diamonds of the world." To break down these high 
prices and also as a lever to induce the British Government 
to adopt a more conciliatory attitude on the silver question 
then agitating the States, these senators propose a 30 per 
cent tax on diamonds, which would " check consumption 
and reduce the excessive and artificial prices for these 
stones which now prevail and might induce people of Cape 
Colony to believe that the present attitude of Great Britain 
in relation to silver is not only unfair and unjust but is also 
injurious to the interests of that colony." A very pretty 
Roland for Rhodes's Oliver ! 

Nevertheless the M'Kinley tariff made him all the more 
anxious to create " the practical tie " of colonial preference. 
He feared that, unless retaHatory measures were adopted, 
America's protective policy would starve England out of 
the world markets and reduce her industrial labourers to 
distress. But these very retaUatory measures would, he 
felt, give the Mother Country her opportunity of dis- 
criminating in favour of the natural products of her colonies, 
and of receiving from them a preference for her manufac- 
tured articles ; and so the whole Empire would be drawn 
closer together by trade interests. To the Dutch farmer this 
poHcy offered an immediate advantage in better prices on 
the English market for wool and wine and a prospect even 
for wheat. But to Harcourt and most of the Enghsh 
statesmen of the time the prospect was not so attractive. 



202 CECIL RHODES 

Harcourt bluntly called Rhodes a protectionist, much to 
his indignation, for Hke all tariff-reformers he was convinced 
that he and his school alone possessed the true secret of free 
trade. He was not a very clear thinker and in his anxiety 
to relieve the English industrial labourer, forgot that a 
preference to colonial products would imply higher prices 
for all foo'dstuffs and raw material, and raise the price of 
Hving and the cost of manufacture in England. However, 
it must be admitted that he was so convinced of his case 
that he was willing to give where he did not receive. When 
he was negotiating with the Colonial Office for the settlement 
after the Matabele War, he tried to get a preference clause 
into the new constitution so framed that, without any 
return from England, it should be impossible to increase 
the existing low tariff on British imports into Rhodesia or 
to put any duty at all on goods sent from states in the 
South African Customs Union. The provision was harm- 
less enough and in no way violated the principles of free 
trade, but Harcourt and his colleagues rejected it on the 
ground that it might interfere with the treaty rights of 
other powers. In the Cape Parliament the Cape farmers 
expressed bitter disappointment at the loss of free trade 
with Rhodesia and were pacified by Rhodes, as best he 
could, by the promise not to let the question rest. Four 
years later he had better success with Lord SaUsbury's 
Government and had the clause inserted in the Rhodesian 
Constitution. 

By his vehement methods of asserting Cape Colony's 
soHdarity with other parts of the Empire Rhodes succeeded, 
to a greater extent even than Macdonald in Canada, in 
demonstrating the practical possibiHty of a closer union 
between England and her colonies. Men like Seeley, Sir 
George Grey, Dilke and Stead had long been preaching 
this doctrine ; what was needed to make it a Hving force 
was proof that the Mother Country would not thereby 
increase her heavy responsibihties or the colonies lose their 
precious independence in internal affairs. Macdonald 
afforded this proof for Canada and Rhodes for South 
Africa. Before he came into public hfe complete inde- 
pendence or humihating dependence on the changing 






PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 203 

policy of Downing Street seemed the only alternatives for 
the Cape. Out of office he jealously upheld the principle 
of complete liberty for internal concerns coupled with the 
British flag for defence, and during his five years as Prime 
Minister converted it into an axiom in the relations between 
the Colonial and Home Governments. 



Ill 

Rhodes's internal administration is hardly less memor- 
able than his external policy When he took office in 1890 
the Colony was passing through a severe financial crisis : 
one of the principal banks had suspended payment, money 
was hard to get and even as late as 1892 a Cape loan could 
not be raised in London on better terms than 93 per cent. 
But between them Merriman, by his economies in the 
pubhc service and his knowledge of finance, and Rhodes, 
by the confidence he inspired in the City as well as in South 
Africa, soon restored the credit of the colony. A Bank Act 
was passed imposing salutary restrictions on the issue of 
notes, and, owing chiefly to his predecessor Merriman's good 
management, Sprigg, in introducing the budget of 1894, was 
able to say that the Cape loan was quoted at 107 per cent, 
and that the credit of the colony was never so high. 

Except for the Scab Act already described, Rhodes's 
principal measures, the Franchise and Ballot Act, the 
annexation of Pondoland and the Glen Grey Act, all bore 
more or less directly on the native question. When he 
introduced the last of these measures, which involved a 
considerable change in native administration, Merriman 
accused him of having hastily concocted the Bill during " a 
scamper through the Transkei,*' the chief native preserve. 
The charge, as Rhodes pointed out, was most unjust, for 
he had been deahng with natives for twenty years, and 
for the last ten years had more natives under his control 
than any other man in South Africa. Alone on the cotton 
plantation of the Umkomaas he had begun to study the 
ways of raw natives and continued doing so in the early 
days of Kimberley ; in Basutoland and Bechuanaland he 
had been brought into touch with their chiefs and the 



204 CECIL RHODES 

domestic concerns of independent native states. In the 
De Beers compounds he was responsible for over 10,000 
natives, and in Southern Rhodesia alone he was the virtual 
ruler of nearly 300,000. He had a right to speak on native 
questions, for he brought to these responsibihties great 
sympathy with the natives and a peculiar gift, also possessed 
by his brother Herbert, for attracting and attaching black 
men to himself. His own personal attendants were devoted 
to him, and Tony, his well-known factotum, was looked on 
more as a trusted companion than a menial. Wherever he 
went he made friends with the natives and had an un- 
common gift for always recognizing those he had once 
spoken to. In his first journey through Mashonaland he 
had in his train a small native boy, " Pikenin," who very 
soon disappeared from the party : five years later, once 
more travelling through the country, he saw the same boy 
washing clothes in a stream. " Ah, Pikenin, is that you ? " 
he said at once, and offered to take him to Cape Town, 
where for many years he Uved happily in Rhodes' s house- 
hold. At Kimberley he loved to saunter round the com- 
pounds, chaffing the natives, setthng their Httle troubles 
and learning all about their tribal customs. But though 
sympathetic he never allowed a native to take a liberty 
with him and was very impatient of any sign of truckling 
to natives in others. He once related how he shocked the 
Imperial commissioner at the capital of Lerothodi, para- 
mount chief of the Basutos, by his straight talk with that 
chief for harbouring a native malefactor : " Why do you 
keep that murderer in your country ? '' he asked, " you 
ought to be ashamed of it. I am very sorry I have nothing 
to do with it, or I should keep you till you give the murderer 
up " ; and yet in telling the story he showed an unexpected 
touch of sympathy with the malefactor : " Who wandered 
about, prepared to murder everybody. I believe he leads 
a most unhappy life." He always felt that the treatment 
of the natives, watched, as he said, " not onty here but at 
home," was as difficult as any question arising in South 
African poHtics, and accordingly laid down a rule that the 
Ministry of native affairs should be associated with the 
office of Prime Minister. He took pleasure in the title 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 205 

" father to the natives " which this association brought 
him, and rejoiced that the additional charge of one and a 
half million Cape natives to his responsibihties in Rhodesia 
and at Kimberley would enable him to " follow one train 
of thought " in formulating a policy. For he was convinced 
that no greater mistake could be made than to look at 
native policy from a local instead of a South African 
standpoint : the question of union was involved in the 
right solution, and even the survival of the Europeans. 
Appreciating the difficulties, as he did, he was modest in 
his appeal for confidence. " I have no native policy," he 
admitted at the outset, " I could not afford to say I have. 
I am a beginner at these things. . . Still, give me a trial, 
as I hope to do it well." 

The Cape system, as he found it, differed from that of 
the other states in making no poHtical distinction between 
natives and Europeans. The franchise for both, on a basis 
of a £25 yearly occupation, had been hardly altered since 
1853, when the Colonial Secretary, Newcastle, refused to 
impose any restrictions, " in order that all the Queen's 
subjects at the Cape, without distinction of class or colour, 
should be united by one bond of loyalty and a common 
interest." At first, when the proportion of natives in the 
colony was little more than two to one, and the few qualified 
natives rarely voted, the practical objections to this provi- 
sion were neghgible : but it was very different in 1891 
when the natives, by enlargement of territory and their 
greater productivity, had increased fourfold and the whites 
only twofold ; and when the " blanket voters," as they 
were called, had already the deciding voice in certain 
constituencies. On the other hand in Natal, where the 
natives were as ten to one of the whites, the franchise law 
had been so contrived that only thirteen were on the voting 
roll ; in the Transvaal and the Free State they had no 
franchise and in the Transvaal were expressly excluded from 
equal rights in Church or State. Though the Cape colonists 
in 1853 had generally opposed the equal franchise to the 
natives, since then a considerable body of pubHc opinion 
had grown up in its favour on the ground that it was the 
best means of educating the natives and preserving them 



2o6 CECIL RHODES 

from oppression ; and some of the most enlightened men 
in Cape politics, Saul Solomon and his relations, Innes, 
Merriman, Sauer and the Schreiners, upheld this view. 
Rhodes was of the contrary opinion. He was convinced 
that any attempt to unite South Africa would break down 
on the snag of the Cape native franchise, which the other 
states would never admit ; and union was to him always a 
paramount consideration. " We have hved in the past," 
he said in his younger days, " under what might be called 
the mists of Table Mountain, and the pohcy of the House 
has been drifting like the clouds that sail round it. . . . 
We must adopt a system of Indian despotism in our relations 
with the barbarians of South Africa, so that by means of it 
there may be a possibiUty of creating a United South Africa 
stretching to the Zambesi," and it was no doubt such a 
sentiment that provoked Sir WiUiam Harcourt's sarcasm : 
" Mr. Rhodes is a very reasonable man. He only wants 
two things. Give him Protection and give him Slavery 
and he will be perfectly satisfied." He also firmly beheved 
that in their own interests the natives should be treated 
like children. His own countrymen had won the franchise 
only after centuries of painful education in politics : it was 
absurd that natives, uneducated and barely emerging from 
a savage state, should have the same privilege. "It is 
just as if," he said, " the Lord Mayor and his Corporation 
were to suddenly proceed to Stonehenge and finding the 
Druids there discuss with them municipal legislation. It 
would be absurd. And the absurdity of our legislation 
has been that it is only within the last forty years that we 
found we could not put natives on the footing of the 
whites." 

When, therefore, in 1891 Hofmeyr and the Bond urged 
upon him a measure which would increase the white and 
reduce the coloured vote, they were merely forcing an open 
door. But he had to tread warily, for three of his Ministers, 
Innes, Sauer and Merriman, were against the Bond on this 
question. However, their scruples were appeased by a 
vague resolution " to secure due weight in the future for 
the material and educational interests of the country," 
and in the following year the Franchise and Ballot Bill was 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 207 

introduced. The object of Rhodes and the Bond was 
indirectly attained by raising the occupiers' quahfication 
to £75, by retaining the very low owners' qualification, 
almost entirely confined to Europeans, and by a more 
stringent education test. As a sop to the other members 
of the Ministry a provision for the ballot was introduced. 
In his opening speech Rhodes reviewed the electoral systems 
of most European countries and British colonies and pitched 
upon Jamaica as an example to his liking. Here, he 
asserted, the native franchise had led to the revolution of 
1865, " when stringent measures were used by the governor, 
who was (as is the usual custom in such cases) recalled and 
disgraced " : but it had afterwards been abolished with 
excellent results. And he did not conceal his hostility to 
the ballot clause in his own bill : "I object to the ballot 
in toto," he said, " because I like to know how a person 
votes — not, I hasten to say, for any ulterior purpose," 
but, as he explained, because the loafers and I.D.B. men in 
Kimberley, if not watched by the honest workmen, would 
vote in favour of " free liquor and robbery." But in spite 
of its foster-parent's opposition the ballot was carried with 
the rest of the bill. In the following year the registers 
showed a decrease of 3348 coloured voters and an increase 
of 4506 whites, and, as no existing voters were disfranchised, 
it became increasingly more effective for its objects. 

The settlement of Pondoland was one of the first ques- 
tions Rhodes was called upon to deal with when he took 
over the ministry of native affairs. This native state, 
bounded on the west by Cape Colony and on the north-east 
by Natal, had long been a source of trouble. Its only port, 
St. John's, had been annexed by the Cape, but the natives 
in the interior were given over to the barbarous practices 
of witchcraft and " smelling out " among themselves and 
made themselves a nuisance to their neighbours on each 
side. Rhodes's " unhappy man," Umhlonho, had murdered 
a border magistrate and his clerks in 1880 and was still a 
fugitive from justice ; and cattle raids into the Cape 
territories were common. In 1890 Rhodes had been urged 
by Upington to stop the civil war provoked by Sigcau, 
one of their chiefs, and to put an end to the depredations 



2o8 CECIL RHODES 

of the Pondos by annexing their country : the Home 
Government, he said, would readily consent as Rhodes had 
so many friends on both sides of the House of Commons. 
But Rhodes was not to be hurried by the Irishman's blarney 
into taking over the care of 200,000 more natives without 
full consideration. In 1893, however, his hand was forced. 
Sir Henry Loch was treated with studied insolence by 
Sigcau during a tour in his territory and the chief's other 
neighbour. Natal, was showing a disposition to annex the 
country on her own account. Natal had only recently 
acquired a responsible Government and was hardly yet 
aware of her own hmitations : at any rate Rhodes flared up 
at such presumption and determined to castigate it. On 
his return from the Matabele War he went for his " scamper 
through the Transkei," travelling in great state with eight 
cream-coloured horses and making a great impression on 
the population. The son of a Transkei magistrate, then a 
boy of five, stiU remembers the awe with which he beheld 
the big, broad man, who said to him : " My boy, I'll send 
you to Oxford," and the effort it cost him to retort " No, 
you won't." At Kokstad on the borders of Pondoland he 
was welcomed by the local magnates, but got rid of them 
and went off to lie on the hillside by himself, muttering, 
as he beheld the beauty of the place, " Oh how I wish they 
would let me alone — let me stay here." But he had to 
come down to the banquet at night, where he sat hstless 
and bored till a local orator began to attack the Cape 
Government and expressed a wish for Natal to annex the 
country. At that he woke up to some purpose and 
launched out into a violent tirade against Natal, speaking 
of its parhament as a parochial assembly and sneering at 
its wretched financial state and its tiny white population. 
This savage attack on gallant little Natal illustrates 
Rhodes's inability sometimes to see beyond his immediate 
object. He defended it in the Cape House on the plea that 
it was necessary to make their neighbours realize the 
position. But he might have attained this object by less 
provocative language. It did him harm, for though the 
Natal people might have stood the reproof from Rhodes, 
they were maddened when Sprigg followed it up by a 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 209 

truculent reminder, " We are the big bear and you are the 
Httle bear '* ; and it antagonized Escombe, Natal' s best 
statesman, from whom Rhodes was then hoping for support 
in proposals of union. 

From Kokstad, though warned of the risk, he went into 
Pondoland. He announced to some minor chiefs that 
their country was to be annexed, then summoned Sigcau 
to attend him and kept him waiting three days, the exact 
period the chief had kept Sir Henry Loch waiting, before 
granting him an interview. He told him plainly that he 
and his Pondos were unfit to govern themselves, and then 
took him for a walk towards a mealie field, on which some 
machine-guns had been trained ; at a given signal the 
guns opened fire and laid low the mealie crop ; " and that 
is what will happen to you and your tribe," grimly remarked 
Rhodes, " if you give us any further trouble." But he 
took no risks and ensured the ready submission of the 
Pondos by a sufficient display of force. Never, said one 
of the magistrates appointed to take over the country, had 
he met so satisfactory a Minister : there was no red tape, 
and he had only to speak or write a word to Rhodes to 
get every reasonable request compHed with at once. And 
though stern he was fair to the natives, and saved them 
from the depredations of concession hunters by refusing 
to recognize any grants previously made that did not 
appear just and equitable. 

With further experience of native problems and increased 
opportunities for " following out one train of thought," Rhodes 
gradually shed his juvenile ideas of " oriental despotism " 
and saw that a more constructive policy was needed than 
a mere restriction of the franchise. He came to the con- 
clusion that the privileges and higher civilization of the 
Europeans imposed upon them responsibilities to the 
natives, " those children, just emerging from barbarism," 
and an obligation to help them to a better use of their 
" human minds." '* If you are really one who loves the 
natives," he said at Queenstown, " you must make them 
worthy of the country they live in, or else they are certain, 
by an inexorable law, to lose their country. You will 
certainly not make them worthy ... if you allow them 

P 



210 CECIL RHODES 

to sit in idleness and if you do not train them in the arts 
of civilization." Not that he believed in the Board school 
form of education too often given by well-meaning mission- 
aries, which at best produced natives fit only to be Kafhr 
parsons or newspaper editors, both objects of his intense 
dislike, instead of helping them to use their capacities 
to the best advantage ; but he heartily approved of the 
training in manual crafts provided at Lovedale, as an 
incentive to work instead of loafing. Speaking of the 
native loafer, he described his life as " very similar to that 
of the young man about town, who lounges about the 
club during the day and dresses himself for a tea-party in 
the afternoon, and in the evening drinks too much, and 
probably finishes up with immorality. . . . They are a 
nuisance to every district in the Transkei, to every magis- 
trate in the Transkei, and to every location. We want to 
get hold of these young men and make them go out to 
work.'* To do him justice, Rhodes would have been qjiite 
as ready to force the EngUsh loafer and young man about 
town to work as the native loafer ; and it was an absurd 
travesty of the truth for an English paper to describe him 
as " an Enghsh-speaking Dutch Boer, thirsting for slavery," 
because he wanted to encourage work among the natives. 
The natives then must be taught to work, but on Hues of 
their own ; and these Hues were best found when they 
were not contaminated by too close contact with Euro- 
peans, but segregated in districts of their own. The 
natives in their undeveloped stage were readier to imitate 
the vices of Europeans than their virtues, and were especially 
subject to temptation from the liquor bars and canteens 
that Europeans always brought with them. But in native 
reserves it was possible to exclude the drink traffic altogether, 
as Khama, the enlightened chief of the Bamangwato, had 
done. For these reasons Rhodes decided to keep the natives 
as much apart from the whites as possible. But in their 
reserves they were to have every inducement to improve 
themselves. He had a great behef in the virtues of landed 
property as an aid to self-respect, so he set himself to 
introduce it gradually as a substitute for the communal 
tenure, which left the villagers too much at the mercy of 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 211 

their head-man and gave them httle incentive to industry ; 
and also in the educative value of self-government in local 
matters suited to their apprehension. " The natives know 
nothing of the politics of the country," he declared ; " they 
have told me time after time that they do not understand 
these poUtics. ' Leave us alone, but let us try and deal 
with some of our little local questions.' That is the 
■common statement they have made to me." So in their 
reserves the natives were not to have the colonial franchise, 
but as a set off were to elect representatives with a power 
of taxation for the purposes of education, road and bridge- 
making, plantations and other needs of the district. This 
policy, to which he had come after he had been Prime 
Minister four years, was a great advance on his previous 
utterances. But even here the development of his ideas 
did not cease. Within a few years he was proclaiming 
" equal rights for all civilized men, irrespective of races, 
south of the Zambesi," his final creed, when he had purged 
himself of all colour-prejudice and attached importance 
only to capacity and intrinsic worth. 

These four principles, then : work, segregation in native 
reserves, individual property and local self-government, 
were embodied in the famous Glen Grey Bill, presented to 
the Cape Parliament late in the session of 1894. It was 
so called from the district near Queenstown, to which 
its provisions were in the first instance to be tentatively 
applied. " As a gentle stimulus to these people to make 
them go on working," a labour tax of los. was imposed 
on all male natives not in possession of landed property, 
who had not worked outside the district during the year ; 
no Europeans were allowed to settle in the district ; village 
management boards were to assign plots of eight or nine 
acres apiece to individual owners ; and besides these village 
boards, district councils and a general native council of 
the Transkei were to manage local affairs and levy rates 
in their respective spheres. Rhodes introduced the Bill 
in a discursive speech, more illustrative of the workings of 
his own mind than of the details of the Bill, and then 
arbitrarily rushed it through the House with hardly any 
time for serious discussion. Immediately the second reading 



212 CECIL RHODES 

was carried the committee stage was begun ; and after 
a debate of three and a half hours on one clause he said, 
*' I have made up my mind for a night of it/' and insisted 
on sitting till the Bill was through committee next morning. 
No essential injustice was done, for he had previously 
secured the assent of Hofmeyr and his followers to the 
Bill, and the chief advocates of native rights, Merriman, 
Sauer and Innes found no great objection to its principle ; 
while the second and third readings were carried by over- 
whelming majorities. 

The only provision which aroused much criticism from 
the advocates of the natives was the labour tax of los. 
It was resented as a badge of servitude, and was noted as 
singularly convenient to the interests of the Cape farmer 
or the mine manager, always at their wits' end to obtain 
enough native labour. Rhodes replied to his critics on this 
point with a humorous rejoinder to Sir William Harcourt's 
sarcasm about his fondness for slavery : " 1 was much 
more of a slave," he declared, " than any of those natives 
could easily be . . . for nine mortal years of my life ; and 
it was compulsory slavery too. . . . Six years at school I 
had to work five hours during the day and prepare 
work for the next day for three hours in the evening, while 
at college I was compounded in the evenings and not allowed 
out after 9 o'clock." This pathetic picture of Rhodes, a 
slave at Oxford, was unkindly marred by Innes's quick 
interjection : " And you never went out, I suppose ? " and 
was hardly a serious argument. The gravamen of the 
charge against the clause was not that it acted as an 
inducement to labour, but that it compelled the natives 
to work for white men, whereas the " poor whites," equally 
in need of a stimulus, were under no such compulsion. 
In practice the clause, which was objected to as much by 
Europeans most anxious to raise the natives' standard of 
work as by the natives themselves, very soon became a 
dead letter, and eleven years later was formally repealed. 
But the other, more important, provisions of the Bill were 
an unqualified success. New reserves were within a very 
short time added to the Glen Grey district for the purposes 
of native land tenure and local government ; and the Act 



PRIME MINISTER OF THE CAPE 213 

was twice amended and amplified. The natives entered 
into the spirit of ownership and took up plots eagerly : 
only three years after the passing of the Act 7088 of these 
plots had been surveyed and 6576 taken up, and £15,000 
had been collected from natives in survey fees. Even 
without the stimulus of the labour tax the young men's 
inclination to work increased with the removal of tempta- 
tions to Uquor and improved educational facilities, and with 
their greater appreciation of necessities and luxuries to be 
obtained only by the earnings of labour. The native 
councils worked well. Thirteen years later the Transkei 
General Council was raising rates to the tune of £46,750, 
more than half of which was devoted to education and 
£12,700 to road improvement. The Superintendent- 
General for Education reported that " in those districts 
where the Glen Grey Act has been proclaimed, better 
teachers are got, schools are in better condition generally, 
and the people take a good deal more interest in educa- 
tion " ; and a Select Committee of the Cape House stated 
in 1903 that " the operations of the Act have been, as they 
were intended to be, most beneficial to the natives 
concerned. Individual tenure and local self-government 
have done much, and will in the future do more, to lead 
the aboriginal natives in the path of improvement." 



In a speech dehvered at Queenstown soon after the 
passage of the Glen Grey Act Rhodes reviewed, with some 
natural pride, the achievements of his two Ministries. 
The settlement of the franchise question, long an apple of 
discord in Cape poUtics, the Scab Act, the completion of 
railway connections in the colony and the extension of 
the trunk system to the Transvaal border, the annexation 
of Pondoland and the Glen Grey Act : these were the 
measures for which he took chief credit. It was due to 
luck, no doubt, that the annexation passed off so well, 
but, as he said, recalling the story of the man who always 
backed Fred Archer, "It is good to have a Minister with 
luck." But the Glen Grey Act was his favourite child. 



214 CECIL RHODES 

** We are prepared to stand or fall by it : it is worth fighting 
and worth falling by," and he added, *' if the Glen Grey 
policy is a success, we shall see neighbouring states adopting 
it. ... I hope we shall have one native poHcy in South 
Africa." Here was the secret of his affection for it, for 
during four patient years he had done all he could, except 
when he lost his temper at Kokstad, to improve relations 
with the neighbouring states and colonies, with the one 
cherished object of bringing them into closer federation for 
common purposes. With this note of union he concluded 
his speech : "I have a greater and bigger idea — and that 
is by steady work, which I take deUght in, by keeping an 
object in view and at the same time not hurting the 
independence of neighbouring republics — to work with one 
broad and big idea, and that is the union of South Africa." 



NOTE TO CHAPTER XIII 

[See above, p. 187] 

Correspondence between Sir Henry de Villiers and Rhodes 
on the formation of the Ministry in 1893. 

Cape Town, 

^th May 1893. 

My dear Rhodes — I am somewhat puzzled by your note of 
yesterday's date saying that you had found my condition impossible 
to carry out — for the only condition mentioned in our interviews 
was that you undertook to be unofficial member of any Ministry 
I should form. Let me very briefly recall the occurrences of the 
past week while they are fresh in our memories. On Friday morn- 
ing you called on me at Sauer's request to consult me about some 
matter of professional etiquette which had arisen in his unfortunate 
dispute with Sivewright. After I had given my view we discussed 
the political situation and incidentally I let fall the remark that, 
after twenty years' service as Chief Justice, I had a strong inclination 
to re-enter political life in view of the important questions that may 
crop up in the near future. After a few moments' consideration 
you said that the best solution of the crisis would be that I should 
form a Ministry, you undertaking to be an unofficial member. 
You pointed out how undesirable it was that the Premier should 
be so frequently absent as you would be bound to be. This took 
me by surprise, but you asked me seriously to consider the matter 
and meet you again. That evening you called at my residence 
and we discussed the probable names of the Ministry I should form. 
On Saturday evening you again called, and we agreed upon the 
names of Sprigg, Schreiner and Faure in addition to yours and 
mine. Coming to Sauer's name we agreed that if he should not 
take office Laing would be suitable. The doubt in regard to Sauer 
arose from the fact that he had been a party to the dispute which 
was wrecking the Ministry. You offered to call again on the 
Sunday morning before riding to town to see Hofmeyr, but I said 
that I would meet you at your residence and ride with you 
some distance. When we met I handed you a letter agreeing to 
the Ministry as previously arranged except that Sprigg's name was 
doubtful instead of Sauer's. We both thought that one might not 

215 



I 



2i6 CECIL RHODES 

wish to sit with the other. I told you that I had worked with 
Sprigg in the struggle for Responsible Government and believed that 
I could again work with him, my only objection being that he had 
once landed us in the Basutoland War. As to Sauer I was in the 
dif&culty that you had asked me not to divulge to him what had 
occurred, and I felt that it might savour of treachery if I took 
advantage of the interview suggested by him by taking of&ce. In 
the course of our ride we had a long and, as I thought, satisfactory 
conversation about the political situation. I told you that my sole 
aim was to advance the good of the country and that my political 
sympathies were with Hofmeyr, whose object I thought to be to 
give his countr5niien that voice in the government of the country 
which Responsible Government was intended to give. If I could 
have seen Sauer that day the whole matter would have been settled, 
but I was bound by my promise to you. The same evening (Sunday) 
you called again and shewed me a memo containing the objections 
against Sauer being included. Some of these objections I could 
not agree with — but I fully realised the force of most of them. I 
agreed that if I were to form a Ministry at all it would have to be 
without Sauer. I therefore said that my decision was not to 
undertake the task. You seemed disappointed and asked me not 
to give a final decision until the following day (Monday). I said 
as things stood it seemed impossible for me to carry out the plan, 
but on leaving, you said you would not take my decision as final 
unless I adhered to it on Monday, when you would meet me at the 
Legislative Council at 1.30. To this I consented. After you left 
I gave the whole matter the fullest consideration and decided that 
it would be impossible under the circumstances to include Sauer 
and that I would ask your consent to explain the position to him, 
feeling sure that he would fully appreciate it. I prepared my address 
to the electors and made every other preparation for the change. 
On Monday morning I thought of seeing you before going to town, 
but could not do so owing to the rain, but I sent a note to you 
asking you to request Hofmeyr (whom you were going to see) to 
meet me at the interview. My object was to explain to him 
personally the general lines of policy which I thought desirable. 
Immediately on my arrival in town I sent for Mr. Schreiner, as I 
felt it a necessity to consult some one on the situation, for I had 
stood perfectly alone up to that time. As he was not engaged in 
politics and I had perfect confidence in his discretion, I thought 
him the most suitable person to consult. I had only a few minutes 
to spare before the sitting of the Court and informed him of the 
whole situation. I had to be very guarded with him as I could 
not make a definite offer until 1.30, but I put it to him hypothetically 
whether, in case I should form a Ministry, he would take office under 
me as Attorney-General, and he said he would. He was perfectly 
candid with me and said that he could not have taken the office 
if it involved opposition to Sir Gordon Sprigg, with whom he had 
been in confidential relations. He gave mc other information 



NOTE TO CHAPTER XIII 217 

which satisfied me that I was doing the right thing in deciding to 
take office. While in Court that morning, I received a note from 
you saying that as Hofmeyr had gone to Somerset West for the day 
you could not see him and that you thought it best to see me after 
seeing him. Monday and Tuesday passed without my hearing 
more from you. On Tuesday evening Sauer called and, strangely 
enough, gave me a vague message from you that Hofmeyr had not 
returned and that you would see me later on. He told me that 
the Ministry had resigned but that he knew nothing more. As 
your message confirmed me in the view that you and I were still 
to meet for my final decision, I took the opportunity of asking 
Sauer what his position would be if I formed a Ministry excluding 
him. He said he well knew that I could not be guilty of treachery 
against him and that any Ministry I might form, even if it included 
Sprigg, would have his support. My mind was relieved and I felt 
that at our postponed interview a final arrangement could be arrived 
at. On the following morning (Wednesday), I saw in the papers 
that you were forming a Ministry, and when in Court that day 
I received the note to which I referred at the outset of this letter. 
On the following day I saw it announced that the same Ministry 
had been formed which we had provisionally agreed upon, except 
that the name of Frost was substituted for mine. I do not know 
nor am I entitled to know what induced you to change your mind 
on the Monday or Tuesday, but I regret that even if you thought 
there was some condition in the matter you did not allow me to 
meet you at the appointed time to give you my final decision as 
agreed. I was kept in suspense from Monday morning to Wednesday 
morning waiting for the interview which never came off. I do not 
write all this by way of reproach but merely to explain to you my 
own position. In the nature of things I could not take advice 
from any one, and my fear was that I might be acting unworthily 
towards Sauer at whose request you first interviewed me. On 
Monday morning I had a clear course of action before me, and if 
we had met at the appointed time (Hofmeyr 's presence being of 
course not essential) everything would have been arranged, provided 
of course you had not changed your mind. The task you proposed 
to me was not sought for, and it was only a sense of duty which 
induced me to consent to undertake it in case His Excellency the 
Governor should have asked me to do so. — Believe me, yours 
sincerely, J. H. de Villiers. 



Friday. 

My dear Chief Justice — I have carefully read your letter. 
I left you on Monday with the belief that as far as you were con- 
cerned you would not form without one of the old Ministers possessed 
of Administrative training, and the one you desired was Sauer. I 
said I would come again on Monday as I was desirous to see Hofmeyr 
and consider if such a course was possible. I found on Monday 



2i8 CECIL RHODES 

morning that Hofmeyr was away. I had also had full time to 
consider the question, and I had personally come to the conclusion 
that it would be impossible for me to be a Minister of a new 
Ministry if one of the old Ministers between whom differences had 
occurred became a member of the new Ministry, but I thought I 
would see Hofmeyr and ask his advice on his return. He fully 
agreed with me, and I felt therefore in view of your decision on 
Sunday evening it was hopeless to ask you to reconsider your decision, 
in fact your answer had been so emphatic I did not expect you to 
do so. I had asked to see you again in order to consider very 
carefully whether your condition was possible in any way to carry 
out. — Yours truly, C. J. Rhodes. 



■V 1 ' 



CHAPTER XIV 

GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTfliN 

After he left the Hertfordshire vicarage at the age of 
seventeen, Rhodes never knew what it was to have a real 
home of his own or, except perhaps when he rode alone on 
the veld with the bush-boy by his side, to enjoy true privacy. 
DwelUng-places he had many, but each of them, to his mind. 

Was but a Tent where takes his one day's rest 
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest. 

Until he took office as Prime Minister he had never troubled 
himself about his personal comforts or the kind of house he 
dwelt in. At Kimberley he shared rooms with a friend or 
two, at Cape Town during the session he was content with 
a noisy lodging in Adderley Street, and took his meals at 
the club or an hotel ; his tastes were simple, and he had no 
time or incHnation for such an estabhshment as his wealth 
could command. But when he became Prime Minister he 
felt it incumbent on him to live in a style more befitting 
the dignity of his position as head of the dominant state in 
South Africa. He soon found a house to his purpose. 

At Rondebosch, on the outskirts of Cape Town, the 
Dutch East India Company had three barns or store-houses, 
De Groote, De Kleine and De Oude Schuur, in a hollow at 
the foot of the Mountain ; here they stored their tithes and 
the grain, wood, skins, wine and other necessaries for the 
Cape community and for revictualling East Indiamen that 
called at Table Bay on the voyage to or from Batavia. 
These store-houses had houses attached to them for the 
accommodation of the official store-keepers, persons of some 
importance in the Government, the chief of them being the 

219 



I 



220 CECIL RHODES 

Opper-baas van de Schuur, who lived at Groote Schuur : ^ 
the last Opper-baas to live there was an ancestor of Jan 
Hofmeyr, who Hes buried in the grounds. In the middle of 
the eighteenth century the Company sold the houses and 
grounds to private owners. The Groote Schuur house passed 
through several hands, suffering some disfiguring alterations 
in the process, and in recent years had been occasionally 
let to English governors as a summer residence. In 1891 it 
was in thet. possession of Mrs. van der Byl, who had re- 
named it Tie Grange. In that year Rhodes leased it, and 
two years later bought the freehold. He also acquired by 
degrees some 1500 acres of the neighbouring mountain and 
valley land ; all, including the house and a small block of 
buildings in Cape Town, at a cost of over £60,000. On 
becoming its owner Rhodes restored to the house its old 
Dutch name of Groote Schuur, and also set about remodelHng 
it on the lines of an old water-colour drawing he bought, 
which showed its appearance before the disfiguring 
alterations. 

By good fortune, at a luncheon party in 1892, he chanced 
to meet Mr. Herbert Baker, a young architect who had 
recently come on a visit to South Africa. Baker had been 
wandering about the Cape Peninsula, rediscovering with 
joy the then nearly neglected beauty of the old Dutch 
farm-houses. Simple, solid, cool and spacious, they seemed 
almost fashioned by nature to tone in with the sunhght 
and clear air of the country, and were in striking contrast 
with the hideous and incongruous buildings of more modem 
days. Since the end of the Dutch Company's rule the art 
of good building had been fast disappearing from South 
Africa owing to the growing craze for cheapness and easy 
work. In place of the beautiful old thatched or tiled roofs, 
sheets of corrugated iron disfigured the landscape ; instead 
of the local craftsmen's well-wrought metal fittings and care- 
fully moulded doors and window-frames in the seventeenth- 
and eighteenth - century houses, cheap ready-made sub- 
stitutes, turned out by the gross in European factories, 

^ Some account of the duties of the Opper-baas is given in Life at the 
Cape in Mid-Eighteenth Century, by O. F. Mentzel. Translated for the 
Van Riebeeck Society (Cape Town, 1919). 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 221 

were imported. The fine hard native woods formerly 
fashioned into rafters or into the simple and beautiful 
furniture of the farmsteads were neglected for the shoddy 
chairs, tables and planks brought over in ship-loads. Houses 
were built and furnished hastily and without any regard to 
style or the needs of the climate. This decay in the building 
and furnishing arts was only a symptom of the attitude, 
deplored by Rhodes, of too many of the English colonists. 
The Dutch loved the country and intended to live and die 
there, and ordered their lives accordingly ; many of the 
English came simply to seek their fortunes at the mines or 
as traders at the ports, and never looked on the country as 
a permanent home. Jerry-built houses, good to last their 
time in the country, did well enough for them ; and unfor- 
tunately the fashion spread to the Dutch also. Baker felt 
all this and had a mind to see if the old art could be revived ; 
but he was young and untried. Rhodes saw that his ideas were 
good, and decided to give him a trial. Bidding him come 
round and hear his "thoughts," he told him briefly to restore 
the front of Groote Schuur according to its original plan, 
and then left him to his own devices. The pitch of the roof 
had been altered by a former owner, and to avoid the danger 
of fire the thatch replaced by slates ; by the time Rhodes 
came back from the Matabele War, Baker had entirely 
restored the front with its original gables and high-pitched 
roof of thatch. Rhodes said little, but told Baker to go on 
rebuilding the rest of the house in the old style. 

Soon he began to take a deep interest in the work himself. 
" I want the big and simple, barbaric if you like," he would 
say. He had all the deal planks in the structure replaced 
by beams and ceihngs of solid teak, and the rooms either 
panelled in teak or simply whitewashed. In the bath- 
room he had a great mottled-marble bath such as the Romans 
used ; and the only modern note he allowed on the front of 
the house was a bronze plaque, by the sculptor Tweed, let 
in above the doorway, and representing Van Riebeeck's 
landing in 1652. The furnishing was of a piece. He was 
once shown a plain Dutch wardrobe of black South African 
wood, and was so taken with it that he allowed Baker to 
furnish the house throughout in the same style, either with 



222 CECIL RHODES 

old pieces discovered in Dutch farm-houses or with chairs 
and tables made of native timber by specially trained local 
craftsmen. He even went about making purchases for 
himself, and though at first he made some mistakes, never 
having thought much of such things in his busy life, he soon 
developed a very clear idea of his own taste, and, unlike 
many miUionaires with a craving to form art collections, 
would never abdicate his own judgement. One unfortunate 
expert from Bond Street was brought out to help in finding 
old Dutch furniture, but he took too much upon himself 
and was soon bundled home. He refused to form a picture 
gallery : good pictures, he said, were too expensive for him 
when there were so many miles of railway to be built in 
Rhodesia, and there was only one, a fine example of the 
Enghsh school, in the dining-room at Groote Schuur. Nor 
did he care for small niggHng objects, however valuable and 
beautiful. In his clean, bare, well-proportioned rooms he 
had a few pieces of soHd furniture, some good specimens of 
old Dutch glass. Delft or Oriental china brought to the 
country in the Company's days, and one or two relics of the 
ancient arts of South Africa, the chief favourite being a very 
wise-looking stone bird, found in the Zimbabwe ruins. ^ 

One of the principal rooms in the house was the Kbrary. 
Here again were signs of his individuaUty. His books were 
not a mere millionaire's collection of standard works, 
sumptuously bound, or rare editions collected without plan 
or personal taste, but the gleanings of his own eccentric 
choice. Though not a great reader — he led a too active Hfe 
for that — he occasionally had great bouts of reading, especi- 
ally on board ship. Then he read books likely to help him 
in his own schemes, mining regulations of all countries, as 
we have seen,^ when he was immersed in his diamond mines ; 
treatises on federal schemes in Canada and AustraHa, as 
Lord Grey once suggested to him, when he was revolving 
plans for South African union. One of his constant com- 
panions was a well-scored Marcus Aurelius, and he knew 

^ For the account of Rhodes's building at Groote Schuur and else- 
where and his artistic views, I am deeply indebted to notes kindly 
supplied me by Mr. Herbert Baker. 

^ See Chap. IX. p. 97. 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 223 

his Bible well. Books of travel or descriptions of national ' 

customs and institutions always had a fascination for him, ) 
and generally brought grist to his mill : he once met Sir D. 
Mackenzie Wallace and told him that he had been reading 
his book on Russia with great pleasure, and derived from it 
some of the ideas of land tenure that he incorporated in his 
Glen Grey Act. He made a special hobby of everything 
known relating to the exploration and history of Africa, 
and eagerly sought out for his library old maps of the con- 
tinent, accounts of the early discoverers and investigations 
into the tribal institutions of the natives. In 1892 he sent 
Mr. Wilmot, a member of the Cape legislature well known 
for his interest in African antiquities, to secure copies of 
documents in the Public Record Office and in the Vatican 
Library, and to buy for the library at Groote Schuur manu- 
scripts and rare books about the early history of South 
Africa. Another feature of his hbrary is the collection of 
type-written translations of Greek and Latin authors. This 
collection arose in this wise. One of his favourite authors 
was Gibbon : he loved him for the majesty of his conception, 
for his language, and still more for the connection he traced 
between Gibbon's account of the grandeur of Imperial Rome 
and his own idea of Great Britain's Imperial mission. Talk- 
ing of Gibbon during a country-house visit in England, he 
expressed regret that his knowledge of Latin and Greek did 
not enable him to read all the authorities quoted in the 
Decline and Fall, and that there were no good translations 
available. On his host's advice he went to see if Mr. 
Humphreys of Hatchard's could help him to get the trans- 
lations he needed, found he would undertake it, and left 
him a cheque on account with instructions to procure 
literal and complete translations of all Gibbon's authorities. 
Scholars were engaged to translate, typists to copy, and 
clerks to index the required versions, which in due time 
began to flow in to Groote Schuur. Rhodes perhaps hardly 
realized what he had let himself in for : with Suetonius and 
I Tacitus and such like he was well pleased, but when it came 
to the apparently endless series of the complete works of the 
Fathers of the Church, from whom Gibbon quarried, he had 
to cry halt, and issued an order that the Fathers must cease. 



224 CECIL RHODES 

Such as it is, the collection cost him some jfSooo, and is a 
freak hardly worthy of Rhodes ; the money would have 
been much better spent in publishing for the benefit of the 
world some of the excellent versions of interesting works 
not hitherto rendered into EngUsh. But it is unfair, as 
some do, to judge the whole library from this piece of 
extravagance ; for it was composed, as a library should 
be, of books that reflected the owner's tastes in history, 
travel and adventure, social questions and novels, not always 
the best, but those he fancied himself ; and it was the room 
that he used most for his work and his play, and where his 
guests could come and browse to their liking. 

In December 1896, when Rhodes had many other calami- 
ties to afflict him, the house, as restored by Baker, was burnt 
to the ground. Happily most of the books were saved and 
a few of the treasures, but most of the furniture perished 
and nearly all his private papers.^ Baker was at once 
instructed to rebuild the house in the same style, which he 
faithfully did, only once more abolishing the thatch roof, 
owing to its inflammability, and substituting for it not 
slates, but beautiful tiles made in South Africa. Such as 
the house was then built and furnished for Rhodes's use, it 
now remains unaltered as the official residence of the Prime 
Minister of the Union. 

Rhodes gave no less care to the grounds than to the 
house itself. He carefully preserved all their old beauties 
and associations and added new ones in keeping with the 
Mountain, the dominant feature from the back-stoep. He 
treasured a great avenue of trees as an approach from the 
road and the beautiful clumps of stone pines which give the 
foreground of the Mountain the look of a Turner landscape. 
The glen Wolvegat in the further distance, which still had 
its wolf-trap till the middle of the century, had recently 
been stripped of its splendid oak trees, but Rhodes saw that 
its wild growth of vines, maiden-hair, pelargonia and arum 
lilies was left undisturbed. He loved hydrangeas, so he 

^ For this reason the Rhodes Trustees unfortunately possess very few 
personal papers dating further back than 1896. There is a small bundle 
of half-charred papers of an earlier date labelled " Fire Papers," but it 
contains little of much importance. 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 225 

completely filled a hollow within sight of the stoep with 
great masses of hydrangeas that in their season blaze with 
a riot of blue, purple and lilac. He was fond of birds and 
beasts, and tried to acclimatize rooks and singing birds from 
England ; without success, however. He had better luck 
with African fauna. He made a huge enclosure in his park, 
in which buck, zebras, ostriches and other wild animals 
were allowed to roam as they pleased. He also kept some 
lions in a cage, meaning some day to build a lordly edifice 
with portico and marble courts to fit the dignity of the 
king of beasts : this he never accompHshed, but he and the 
poet Kipling got much enjoyment from the Hon-cub, Sullivan, 
until he became too stout to be a safe plaything for children 
or to be able to escape through the bars of the elder lions' 
house. But before all he thought of the view of his beloved 
Mountain. He bought up the interests of water companies 
in order to be able to remove their hideous reservoir from 
the summit of its ridge. He cut down trees here, planted 
new and rare ones there, always with a view to big effects 
and to enhance the majesty of its aspect ; for in planning 
grounds he had what Chatham called " the prophetic eye 
of taste.'' He made roads and paths to give access to the 
finest views on the Mountain, and would sit by the hour 
on the stoep watching the mists roll over it or the changing 
fight playing upon its peaks and kloofs. But his favourite 
spot for musing by himself or with a chosen friend was on 
a buttressed ledge, whence he could see both the Atlantic 
and the Indian Ocean. Here now stands Watts's Physical 
Energy, with the stately Hon portico that commemorates 
the vigilant watcher 

His grounds were thus made beautiful, not for a morose 
and solitary pleasure, but that all his fellow-citizens might 
have enjoyment. Always open to the public, they were 
crowded on Saturday afternoons and Sundays by hofiday- 
makers, who came from Cape Town to picnic and wander 
about. There were no rules or warnings against trespassers, 
and even when a party strayed on to the stoep where he 
was sitting, the only request he made of them was not to 
light a fire there. He refused to close the grounds when the 
depredations in the flower-beds became too flagrant, and 

Q 



226 CECIL RHODES 

when they were shut by a cautious overseer on a scare of 
rinderpest, he ordered them to be reopened immediately. 
He always treated his property on the slopes of the Mountain 
not as a personal possession, but as a public trust. " I 
love," as he said, speaking of the road he had made through 
his grounds and continued right round the Mountain, " I 
love to think that human beings will walk that road long 
after I am gone." 

His house, too, though he could not make it quite so 
pubHc as his grounds, he looked on less as a personal home 
than as a fitting frame for the hospitahty he dispensed 
with regal lavishness. Toward the end of his hfe, when he 
was ailing and obsessed with the idea that his money would 
not go far enough for all his public objects, he was inclined 
to worry over the expenditure on Groote Schuur, which, 
without food, came to over £400 a month for upkeep and 
wages alone ; but such considerations troubled him Kttle 
before the Raid. He was still content for himself with a 
shanty at Kimberley or a tent on the Rhodesian plains to 
live in ; but at all times he enjoyed a good table and good 
wines, which he needed to support his large frame and vast 
energy. He never ate or drank to excess and could, if 
necessary, put up with privations as well as any man ; 
but, whenever it was possible, whether on the veld or in 
town, he was particular that the fare should be abundant 
and good, both for himself and for his guests. At Groote 
Schuur he kept almost open house. His colleagues in 
Parhament would often drop in for lunch and a talk, 
especially tried aUies Uke Hofmeyr, Fuller, who wrote 
some charming reminiscences of him, and, during his first 
Ministry, Sauer and Merriman ; old Kimberley and Johan- 
nesburg friends passing through Cape Town were always 
sure of a welcome, and so were Dutch farmers come from 
remote districts to have long slow talks with their friend 
the Prime Minister. Once a large party of country folk 
were coming to lunch with him and one of his servants 
suggested that, as they were persons of Uttle importance, 
they need not be given of the best wines. " No," said 
Rhodes ; "be sure you give them that special hock : they 
will hke it." One old farmer, Coetzee, come with a deputa- 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 227 

tion to protest against the Scab Act, was so taken with 
his host's welcome that he picked up a stone as a memento 
of his day at Groote Schuur. " Throw it away," says 
Rhodes, " and take this instead," presenting him with a 
beautiful old snuff-box : and some years afterwards old 
Coetzee sent a message through a friend that ** if all 
EngUshmen were like Mr. Rhodes, he would not mind being 
an Englishman instead of a Dutchman." He even had a 
tolerance for globe-trotters, and was often glad to give 
them something new to think about the country by a talk 
at Groote Schuur : to more serious visitors from the old 
country he always gave the warmest welcome. Young 
men bound for Rhodesia were generally asked to the house 
on their way through Cape Town ; for the Founder always 
liked to see of what stuff his boys were made and to give 
special chances to the most promising. For the poet 
Rudyard KipHng he built a Uttle cottage in the grounds 
of Groote Schuur, the Woolpack, and for several years in 
succession persuaded him to come and hve there for some 
months. When a daughter of Bishop Alexander was to 
marry one of his pioneers, Bowen, he invited the bishop 
and both daughters to stay with him and had the marriage 
from his house. 

In the bishop's Life there is a delightful picture of this 
visit. Rhodes is seen in his most charming moods : gallop- 
ing in the early morning over the Cape Flats with one of 
his guests and perhaps Hofmeyr, silent and wrapped in his 
thoughts for a space, then suddenly moved to unceasing 
talk. One morning it was all the Sherlock Holmes game, 
for he had just been reading the book and was full of it, 
and he would give the most whimsical accounts, based on 
a fleeting observation, of every passer-by's past history and 
recent crimes. At lunch he was eagerly discussing some 
problem of the moment with Cape politicians or a pioneer 
from the north, or launching out into a dreamy monologue. 
The House of Assembly took him off in the afternoon ; then 
at supper simple talk with the bishop and his daughters on the 
last book he had been reading, on religion or on some other 
general topic. He had a way of wandering in and out of 
the room during a conversation, sometimes disappearing 



228 CECIL RHODES 

before he had had the answer to his last question : and he 
had a childish liking for the most absurd topics and games. 
" Who is the cleverest man you ever met ? " he once put 
to the company, his own answer being the Prince of Wales : 
another time he started a game of capping quotations, at 
which he proved surprisingly expert, until the bishop 
discovered him, Uke a naughty schoolboy, cribbing from 
a book under the table. Some of his games were of a 
grimmer nature. Lord Haldane recalls a particularly 
dreary one he once started in an English country house. 
It was a wet afternoon and some lady suggested a drawing- 
room game to relieve the boredom. Rhodes woke up with 
a jerk : "A game ? Yes, certainly," and he made the ladies 
sit round him in a ring, with Lord Haldane armed with a 
Whitaker in the middle. The game was for Rhodes to ask 
such questions as " How many regiments are there in the 
British Army ? " or " How many ships in the Navy ? " 
and for Lord Haldane to verify the answers of the other 
players from Whitaker. After an hour or so of this 
the ladies became restive, and Rhodes dismissed them 
with a dry, " I think we've learned something from our 
game." 

At the wedding of Miss Alexander, Rhodes gave away 
the bride, and was so much moved that he almost broke 
down. Indeed Miss Alexander's whole account of this visit 
to Groote Schuur is enough to prove how mistaken are 
the stories of Rhodes's hatred of women's society. He was 
exceedingly courteous to women, and was by no means 
indifferent to the company of those who would talk with 
him sensibly. One of his favourite guests was the great 
Dutch lady, Mrs. van der Byl, the former owner of Groote 
Schuur, to whom he showed great deference, always fetch- 
ing her and taking her away from his house in his own 
brougham. Miss Olive Schreiner, before she quarrelled 
with him, found few people so sympathetic with her work 
as Rhodes ; and when she began attacking him as a 
murderer and one who ought to be an outcast from society, 
he would never speak of her except with respect for her 
ability. He certainly did utter disparaging and even 
brutal remarks about the marriages of some of his friends ; 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 229 

but his objection to marriage was only in those cases where 
he thought the wife would interfere with her husband's 
work in the world, and where the husband made his wife 
an excuse for neglecting his duties. Once, after he had 
addressed at length two packed meetings of Chartered 
Company shareholders and was worn out, a friend brought 
up his bride to introduce to him. Rhodes at once took 
her into a Uttle private room and spoke to her charmingly, 
teUing her especially how much help a wife could give her 
husband. When he was as busy as he could be with the 
Matabele War and negotiations with the High Commissioner, 
he finds time to send two telegrams to Mrs. Colenbrander 
telhng her that her husband at the front is well and begs 
her acceptance of one of his horses. He himself indeed 
once contemplated marriage, but later he came to the 
conclusion that he could never marry : his reason being 
that he had so much to do in the world that he could not 
give a wife as much of his thought and care as she was 
entitled to get. Possibly, had he met the right woman, 
he would have changed his mind. It would certainly 
have been happier for him to have had a good wife : she 
might have saved him from many mistakes of his later 
years and calmed the fiery outbursts that did him and his 
cause no good : and there is no doubt that she would have 
had a most considerate husband. 

Though he naturally did not agree with his religious 
views, the bishop came to the conclusion that Rhodes's 
earnestness of purpose and lofty ideals were as good as 
the religion of many Christians ; and a very different 
evangeHst, General Booth, came to the same conclusion. 
His church was not a building but the veld or, at Cape Town, 
the Mountain. " The fact is, if I may take you into my 
confidence," he told some chapel-goers assembled to see 
him lay the foundation-stone of their place of worship, " I 
do not care to go to a particular church even on one day 
in the year, when I use my own chapel at all other times. 
I find that up the Mountain one gets thoughts, what you 
might term religious thoughts, because they are thoughts 
for the betterment of humanity, and I believe that is the 
best description of religion, to work for the betterment of 



230 CECIL RHODES 

the human beings who surround us." Prayer, he admitted 
to General Booth, was " useful, acting as a sort of time- 
table, bringing before the mind the duties of the day and 
pulling one up to face the obligations for their discharge," 
and when Booth suddenly knelt down in a railway carriage 
and began to offer up prayer for him, he knelt down 
devoutly also, and was pleased to have Booth's promise 
that he would continue praying for him. His own brave 
habit of " looking at the comparative " and thinking, in 
every trial, how much worse off he might have been, stood 
to him for the consolations of reHgion ; and, however 
unorthodox he may have been, he was convinced that every 
man should have some religious creed. He realized, 
perhaps, with all his courage, his own loss in having no 
definite religious beliefs ; and Bramwell Booth records the 
impression of gloom and melancholy his appearance gave 
him. ** Happy ? I happy ? " he exclaimed in answer to 
Booth's question ; " Good God, no ! " and added, " I would 
give all I possess to beheve what that old man [the General] 
beheves in the next carriage." So when he was setting up 
schools in Rhodesia he insisted that half an hour each day 
should be devoted to the teaching of rehgion by denomi- 
national teachers ; "I must say," he wrote to Milton, 
" that experience teaches us the world prefers religion in 
its instruction to the young." There was also to be a 
conscience clause, but those profiting by it, he shrewdly 
added, must have lessons during that half-hour, lest they 
should get into the habit of saying, " Thank goodness my 
good old Dad is an atheist and I get an extra half-hour in 
the playground." He was very human in his religious ideas 
as in everything else. 

Having once made a beautiful home of his own, he turned 
his thoughts to creating beauty elsewhere. He had a 
Roman's passion for interpreting to the dwellers therein 
the majesty and beauty of their own country through 
noble monuments fitting to the natural surroundings. He 
sent Mr. Herbert Baker on a tour " to see Thebes, Paestum, 
Athens and the tomb of Lars Porsena," as he curtly 
expressed it, in order to get ideas for South Africa from some 
of the greatest monuments in Greece, Egypt and Italy. 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 231 

When he discovered the grandeur of the Matoppo Hills, 
he found in one of the caves the remains of the old Matabele 
warrior Mosehkatze. " He had desired to be buried seated 
upright on the summits of his kingdom, so that even in 
death he might look over the limitless expanse below him. 
. . . What a poet that man was ! " exclaimed Rhodes, 
recounting the story to Watts. Here he determined should 
be his own burying place, here the Valhalla for Rhodesia. 
He made a beginning with the Wilson memorial, for which 
the sculptor Tweed made the bronze panels, explaining his 
intention to a father to whom he was showing the drawings : 
" Your boy died for his country, and now I want him to 
teach others to be ready to do the same." All his designs 
were on spacious lines. Buluwayo he planned as if it were 
a capital of a great state, and to connect it with Govern- 
ment House he planted an avenue a mile and a half long ; 
to UmtaH he presented a park, and urged on the 
administrator the planting of another mile-long avenue 
of stone pines and flamboyant trees, adding that if the 
country could not pay for them, he would. At Kimberley, 
his home for twenty years, he caused a great arcade of 
vines and rows upon rows of fruit trees to spring from a 
thirsty soil, and planned a huge bath or fountain in Penteli- 
can marble to commemorate the siege. At Cape Town 
he erected the statue of Van Riebeeck on the quay and 
scrupulously preserved the few historical landmarks of the 
Dutch Company's time. He saved from destruction the 
blockhouses on the Mountain, and tried to rescue the Castle 
on the seashore from the neglect into which it was falling 
from the Imperial authorities' use of it as a barracks and 
office.^ He co-operated heartily with Mrs. Koopman, a 
very influential lady in Bond circles, in her efforts to 
preserve and make accessible the interesting old archives 
of the Cape. In a debate on the proposal to build a modern 
Town Hall on the Parade adjoining the Castle ditch, he and 
Merriman played up to each other well in support of " the 
sentimental aspect." " It is true," said Rhodes, " the 
Parade is wind-swept and unsightly at times, but there are 

^ He failed to purchase it for the Colony from the Secretary for War 
owing to the prohibitive price asked. 



232 CECIL RHODES 

many old associations with it, and further I would point 
out that it is the only open space left in the city. Even the 
Saturday market has been a pleasant custom for two 
hundred years. . . . Oh, let us," he concluded, " keep up 
some of those old things. There are not many in the 
country, and I say it is good for the people to see those old 
things preserved." One of the most lasting services Rhodes 
rendered to the people of South Africa was in helping to 
stimulate pride in their ancient history, and to restore the 
elements of beauty and fitness to their pubhc and private 
architecture. Mr. Herbert Baker was the genius who 
created so many of the beautiful private houses that 
distinguish Johannesburg and Pretoria, who brought a 
note of distinction to the commonplace cathedral at Cape 
Town by the stately chapel he built for it, and gave splen- 
dour and dignity to the administrative capital of the 
Union by the Governor-Generars house and the magnificent 
Government buildings on Meintjes Kop : but assuredly he 
would not have been so readily recognized by South Africa 
as the great architect he is, had it not been for the early 
chance given him by Rhodes and the example he was able 
to set by his work at Groote Schuur. 

The secret of the great influence wielded by Rhodes in 
South Africa was that he was so transparently and whole- 
heartedly a South African. He always spoke of the country 
as his home, and never felt quite happy for long away from 
it. Unhke so many EngHsh South Africans, he much 
preferred having to do with EngHshmen or Dutchmen of 
the country than with new arrivals from England. Thus 
most of his secretaries. Grimmer, Jourdan, Lange, Milton, 
were chosen from men with associations in South Africa 
who intended to spend most of their Hves there. Oxford 
men he Uked to see about him and to talk with, and he was 
always anxious they should settle in the country, but for 
his personal deahngs with the people of the country he 
preferred those who knew the people. For, as he boasted 
at a time when he was accused of causing disunion, he had 
done the contrary in Rhodesia, " by taking up young men 
from the south and putting them into our administration 
of affairs, because our country is not one in which ' no 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 233 

Afrikander need apply.' " So it was with his managers and 
overseers and the other men he employed in his business. 
Sometimes they were brought from overseas on account of 
their special knowledge, but they were generally men pre- 
pared to stay. One of the qualifications, for example, that 
he urged to Hofmeyr for using the services of Sivewright 
was that he intended to remain permanently in the country. 
His great friend Jameson was such another. At a time of 
life and after an experience which would have inclined most 
men to hve comfortably at home, he did as Rhodes, and began 
his hfe anew in South Africa. This identification with the 
country thus accounts for the extraordinary position Rhodes 
enjoyed as a colonial statesman by the end of 1895. There 
was some opposition but no organized opinion against him 
at the Cape from Enghsh or Dutch, for it was recognized that 
he had brought appeasement and prosperity to the colony 
such as it had never enjoyed before. Sprigg was his hench- 
man, Hofmeyr his good friend, and it seemed inconceivable 
that any one could take his place as Prime Minister. 

His position in the world was only less remarkable. In 
Germany, France and Italy he was not yet personally known, 
but had become an object of awe and mystery : in Portugal 
he was the homen horribel : in Constantinople he was received 
with honour by the Sultan and given a jealously guarded 
favour. In Egypt he and Kitchener, as early as 1893, talked 
over their plans of connecting north and south of Africa with 
telegraph and railway, discussing the route and the gauge, 
and starting their friendly rivalry to reach the centre first. 
In his yearly visits to London he had become the Hon of 
society and the hero of the financial and political worlds. 

His home in London, after he became Prime Minister, 
was invariably the Burhngton, a discreet hotel of irre- 
proachable standing, where his wishes were known and 
studied and the same set of rooms always kept for him. 
Here he could live as he pleased ; he had no need to seek 
out people, for the world flocked to see him and do busi- 
ness with him. The diamond amalgamation, his power at 
the Cape, and above all the glamour from his achievements 
in the north, all helped to captivate the imagination of the 
London public. His rough uncouth figure, his carelessness 



234 CECIL RHODES 

in dress and manner, his massive well-cut head, recalling, 
as he himself was pleased to fancy, the Roman emperor 
Titus, all added to the mystery and attraction of his per- 
sonaUty. And no one could mistake that here was a real 
person, quite independently of any passing achievement 
or timely good fortune ; he could be ignored no more by 
opponents than by admirers. Great ladies sought for the 
honour of entertaining him ; he had but to nod and great 
men were eager to forward his schemes or enhst his support 
for theirs. He frankly enjoyed all this flattery. He was 
especially pleased at the favour shown him by Queen Victoria, 
and used to tell with much complacency one of his conversa- 
tions with her. " What have you been doing since I last 
saw you, Mr. Rhodes ? " says the Queen. " I have added 
two provinces to Your Majesty's dominions." " Ah," 
rejoins his Sovereign, " I wish some of my Ministers, who 
take away my provinces, would do as much." In society 
he was moody and ill at ease when bored, and would talk of 
anything but South Africa to silly women who asked him 
silly questions. But to those who interested him he talked 
without reserve. " He could conquer hearts as effectually 
as any beauty that sets herself to subjugate mankind," 
said of him a great lady ; for he had, according to another, 
" great grey eyes and a smile of singular and persuasive 
charm . . . like the sun on a granite hill," and more than 
that, a most winning and contagious enthusiasm in com- 
municating his ideas. Years afterwards one writes to 
remind him of his advice to her at a dinner-party, always 
to speak well of the United States and make all English- 
speaking people understand one another, and humbly hopes 
that the attempts she has made to carry out his behest will 
meet with his approval. 

He knew, too, that the deference paid to him at London- 
derry House, at New Court or in Printing House Square 
were all useful to the great schemes he had at heart. He 
was very sensitive to criticism, especially in the newspapers, 
and took much pains to blunt its edge. Of his methods of 
doing this. Sir Sidney Low gives an illuminating example. 
He had recently attacked Chartered finance in the St. James's 
Gazette, and shortly afterwards had his first meeting with 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 235 

Rhodes, who received him in a towering passion. " Look 
at your newspapers," exclaimed Rhodes ; " see what Truth 
says about me and the Daily Chronicle," and that at a time 
when almost every other newspaper in the kingdom had 
been belauding him. " Jameson and I came home," he 
continued, " after giving a new dominion to the Empire, 
and we found that nobody took any notice of us, but that 
all your people were full of excitement because a Mrs. 
Somebody hadn't been elected to the School Board." After 
this outburst he set himself patiently to explain his views 
to Low, and gained one more adherent. The Times, which 
at one period had spoken somewhat sceptically and shght- 
ingly of his plans, became a whole-hearted convert. Moberly 
Bell, the all-powerful manager of the paper, was admitted 
to Rhodes's confidence, and in turn gave him his full support, 
and Miss Flora Shaw, one of the most brilliant and accom- 
plished members of its staff, was allowed to share many of 
his secrets, and brought all her gift of enthusiastic advocacy 
to his cause. And there was always Stead, a very voci- 
ferous and influential prophet. In the City Rhodes had the 
powerful Kafhr ring at his command, and, thanks to the 
Rothschilds* cautious and weighty approval, was fast 
becoming a gilt-edged security of the Empire. 

In political circles he had closer relations with Liberals 
than Conservatives. Though he obtained the Charter from 
Lord Salisbury's Government, he never seems to have quite 
found his footing with that reserved and fastidious states- 
man. It is true Lord Salisbury once spoke of Rhodes as 
" a very considerable man, a man of very many remarkable 
powers and remarkable resolution and will," but he paid 
very little regard to his vapourings, as he probably thought 
them, on the German and Portuguese treaties, and expressed 
a profound disbehef in the stabiUty of Chartered Companies. 
In the Liberal camp he found more personal sympathy. 
That party was in power during most of his term of office at 
the Cape, and on the whole allowed him to do much as he 
pleased. Lord Ripon, the Colonial Secretary, though some- 
what distant in his relations, generally fell in with his views, 
and the Under-Secretary, Mr. Sydney Buxton, and Sir Robert 
Herbert and Mr. Fairfield, two of the principal officials at 



236 CECIL RHODES 

the Colonial Office, were on most cordial terms with him. 
Lord Rosebery shared many of his opinions on Imperial 
federation, and was a powerful friend in the Cabinet. 
Harcourt was his chief stumbUng-block. Personally, the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer was friendly enough to Rhodes. 
Though he admitted to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt that " Rhodes 
was an astonishing rogue and Uar," his own rollicking 
humour had some affinity with the blunt directness of the 
rough South African. He invited him down to Mai wood 
one Christmas, holding out as an inducement that he would 
find the Forest almost as savage as Matabeleland, and could 
obtain there aU the poles he needed for his Trans-African 
telegraphs. But Rhodes never shared this friendly feeling. 
He looked on Harcourt as a typical Uttle-Englander, and 
never forgave him for refusing to grant the concession to 
Cape wines and rejecting his preferential tariff clause in the 
Rhodesian constitution. 

Once, however, partly by his own manoeuvring, he had 
the satisfaction of seeing Harcourt 's little-England policy 
defeated, an incident which also brought him into conffict 
with Gladstone himself. When the Liberal Government 
took office in 1892, they were called upon to decide promptly 
on the knotty problem of Uganda. The I.B.E.A., then 
responsible for its administration, had announced that they 
were no longer in a financial position to hold the country, 
so, failing Government intervention, Uganda would be lost. 
Rhodes, who happened to be in England at the time, was 
of course strongly against abandonment, both on general 
principles and because Uganda was an essential link in his 
Trans- African railway and telegraph systems. Gladstone 
sent for him to talk it over. " Our burden is too great," 
was the tenor of Gladstone's opening. " We have too 
much of the world, and, as it is, I cannot find the people to 
govern all our dependencies. We have too much to do. 
Not that I blame you, Mr. Rhodes," he added in his courtly 
manner ; " you never give us any trouble." " If you will 
only take the country," Rhodes replied, " you will have 
the people capable of administration," and went on to urge 
his favourite doctrine that unless we annexed every suitable 
market we should find ourselves excluded from all markets 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 237 

by a hostile world. Gladstone took up the point with zest, 
and tried to indoctrinate Rhodes with his own free-trade 
opinions, but neither was shaken in his convictions. Rhodes 
then went off to see Harcourt armed with a large map. 
Harcourt's horrified account of the interview, as reported by 
Mr. Blunt, is as follows : " It is not Egypt only they want 
us to swallow, but the whole of East Africa. Rhodes was 
with me yesterday, and showed me this map, where you will 
see the territories he has grabbed. He has put up a telegraph 
already as far as Nyassa, and means to carry it on to Uganda 
and then to Cairo. He has offered to run Uganda for 
£25,000 a year, though he admits there is nothing to be made 
of it commercially." Nevertheless, Lord Rosebery backed 
up Rhodes's views to such effect that he persuaded the 
Cabinet, before irrevocably giving up Uganda, to adopt 
the compromise of a Government Mission to report on the 
outlook. Rhodes's brother Frank was a member of the 
Mission sent under Sir Gerald Portal ; Rhodes himself 
advised Portal as to route and methods of transport, and, 
as every one expected, once hopes of annexation had been 
raised, the Government found it impossible to draw back. 
Sir William Harcourt himself introduced the Bill to guarantee 
a subsidy for the Uganda railway. 

Besides Africa, the chief question that interested him in 
Imperial poHtics was the Home Rule Bill, with the principle 
of which he fully sympathized, especially now that Gladstone 
proposed to retain the Irish members at Westminster. He 
kept himself informed of the progress of the measure, and in 
1893 restated his views on the importance of Irish representa- 
tion by means of a letter written to The Times by his friend 
Mr. Maguire. Otherwise EngUsh politics did not interest 
him. They seemed to him too much an affair of " Mrs. 
Somebody and the School Board election," and he somewhat 
unreasonably expected the Imperial Parliament to be always 
thinking imperially, unmindful of the resentment he would 
have felt had it directed its Imperial thoughts too meticu- 
lously to South Africa. His real conception of the Imperial 
Government's proper function is brutally expressed in an 
election speech he made in 1898 : " We are not going to be 
governed from home. . . . We do everything. We pass a 



238 CECIL RHODES 

Bill and the Queen just puts her name to it. She never 
objects. . . . But what she does do for us, and without our 
paying for it, is this : she protects us with her fleet, and 
when I take a new country for you she protects me from 
the German and the Frenchman. . . . Whenever I took a 
country I simply said to the Queen : * I have taken that : 
you must put your flag over it.' " 

But though little attracted by English domestic poHtics, 
he was profoundly interested in fundamental social questions, 
and, as far as he could during his short visits, studied them 
at first hand for himself. From his talks with Stead and 
General Booth, and from visits to his own working-class 
property at Dalston, he was appalled by the mass of poverty, 
ignorance and distress he found existing in England. He 
paid a visit with General Booth to the farm colony at Had- 
leigh for the " submerged tenth," and was only confirmed 
thereby in his behef that the only hope for such people was 
the provision of " homes, more homes " in uncrowded and 
healthy surroundings such as he could off^r them in 
Rhodesia. He accordingly invited the General to settle as 
large a colony there as he chose, and offered him assistance 
and full control over the experiment. In his own eyes the 
power to make such offers and to make the world a happier 
and healthier place to live in was the justification and chief 
advantage brought to him by his vast wealth and the great 
expanses of territory he had conquered. 

Apart altogether from newspapers, politicians, financial 
houses and society dames Rhodes always had in his share- 
holders of the British South Africa Company, whose 
numbers had very soon risen to eight or nine thousand, a 
compact body of English pubhc opinion behind him. The 
Board, as we have seen, had very soon become his dutiful 
agents and the willing interpreters of his actions : the annual 
meetings of the shareholders served, whenever he chose, 
as a platform from which to proclaim urbi et orbi not only 
his views on Chartered policy but his opinions on political 
affairs in general. These meetings were held at the Cannon 
Street Hotel, which had the largest hall available in the 
City, and whenever Rhodes was announced to speak it was 
always packed to overflowing. Twice in the first six years 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 239 

of the Company's existence he came to meetings, in Novem- 
ber 1892 and January 1895. On the first occasion he had 
to meet an assemblage by no means satisfied with their 
own or the Company's prospects. Their shares worth 
jf3 : 15s. in 1890 had sunk to 12s. ; the expenses of adminis- 
tration had been enormous ; the promised gold was not 
forthcoming, while the stories of distress and discontent 
among the pioneers had produced a most discouraging effect. 
But his massive appearance, his evident faith in himself, 
and the sense he conveyed of enormous strength gave even 
more confidence than his simple straightforward words : 
all doubts vanished and success seemed more than ever 
assured. In 1895 he came flushed with victory in the 
Matabele War, with his railway completed from Beira to 
Umtali, the main trunk hne advancing and the telegraph 
carried forward to Blantyre, and all he had to do was to 
recount these triumphs. Then, having given a satisfactory 
account of his stewardship, he would turn to the still more 
congenial task of educating his audiences, and through 
them the English people, in the elements of his Imperial 
creed. In both these speeches he dwelt on the advantages 
of his Trans-African telegraph, not only as a dividend- 
earning but also as a patriotic concern. It was already 
earning 4 per cent as far as the Zambesi, he told them in 
1892 ; and its very conception would make it impossible 
to abandon Uganda,- through which it must pass, and 
rendered it imperative either to " deal with " the Mahdi 
or reconquer the Soudan. Another topic common to both 
speeches was the advantage to the community of his 
extension of territory. He took as his text in 1892 the 
argument brought forward by Labouchere for his poHcy 
of " scuttle," that new colonies had never done any good 
to his bootmaking constituents at Northampton, and 
retorted that without these open markets in the British 
Empire the Northampton bootmakers would see their 
foreign markets extinguished by the McKinley and other 
foreign tariffs. In 1895 he tried to picture what the " man 
in the street " gained from the Chartered Company's enter- 
prise. He would have gained more, he said, had not the 
Ministry of the day been too wedded to Cobden's " beautiful 



240 CECIL RHODES 

theory " to agree to his preference clause for British 
manufactures brought into Rhodesia. They would have 
done much better, he added, to accept the real solution of 
social difficulties he offered them than to spend their time 
talking on platforms about " three acres and a cow," " a 
social programme," and " ethical discussions about the 
House of Lords (we all know you are not going to be guilty 
of the folly of making only one Chamber) " ; and he ended 
with the injunction to his shareholders to give their votes 
to Jones or Brown at the forthcoming election on one 
condition only, " that they engage to put that clause in the 
constitution of Matabeleland." 

The chief value of these artless talks to the shareholders 
was that they gave people a practical interest in Imperial 
questions, such as they had never felt before. It needed his 
magnetic personaUty to make men at home reaUze that 
they were personally concerned in the new countries he 
was developing and that success or failure depended partly 
on them. " More homes," preference, di\ddends from gold 
mines, railway and telegraph connections formed a mixed 
assortment of arguments but all of a nature to appeal to 
the man in the street. And from the interest aroused by 
Rhodesia they turned naturally to other parts of the British 
dominions. When therefore Chamberlain took the Colonial 
Office in July 1895, with long-meditated plans for a sympa- 
thetic administration of the colonies, which should lead to 
a more living sense of union with the Mother Country, he 
found that Rhodes, as much as any man, had prepared the 
ground before him. Rhodes, too, led the way for the later 
and less fortunate advance of Chamberlain to colonial 
preference. There had been protectionists and " fair 
traders " before Rhodes, but since Peel's day they had made 
little headway, and even Lord Randolph Churchill had 
found a preferential tariff an unremunerative venture. 
Rhodes was the first to arrest attention to the proposal 
and even to induce the City to consider it ; for here was no 
mere theorist, but a hard practical man of business prepared 
to back his beliefs by restricting his own power of raising 
revenue in Rhodesia. And with Rhodes, as later with 
Chamberlain, the moving force for his creed of tariff reform 



GROOTE SCHUUR AND THE BURLINGTON 241 

was not self-interest, but a belief, however mistaken it 
may have been, that in it he had discovered a panacea for 
social ills and a " practical tie " with the colonies. 

But when all is said the shareholders of the Chartered 
Company came to care far more for Rhodes himself than 
for his opinions or even his achievements. They cheered 
him to the echo when he appeared and at the end of his 
speeches burst into a tornado of applause. They submitted 
wilUngly to all he asked of them. They even accepted, on 
Hawksley's assurance that he approved, the watering down 
of their stock by 100 per cent in order to buy off the United 
Concession Company's claim to half their profits. They 
consented to his demand for a large issue of debentures at 
6 per cent in 1893 : in January 1895 they took his advice 
to create no more ordinary shares, and seven months later, 
merely at his written request from South Africa, agreed 
to issue 500,000 more at a premium.^ Chartered shares 
have not yet paid a dividend, but their possession, thanks 
largely to Rhodes's finance, was an advantage. They 
were generally at a premium after 1892 and so could be 
sold at a profit, and they also carried rights in remunerative 
undertakings such as the Rhodesian railways. But a large 
number of the shareholders held to their shares purely out 
of gratitude to him for allowing them thereby a part in 
his great enterprise. Certainly no man ever had a more 
loyal body of supporters than he in the shareholders of 
the Chartered Company : and the time was to come when 
he would need all the loyalty and sympathy they could 
give him. 

^ This transaction proved very profitable to the Company. The 
500,000 new shares were issued at ^3 : los., and with the proceeds of this 
premium the debenture debt of £'j ^0,000 was wiped out, while ;^i,ooo,ooo 
new stock still remained for railway development and administration. 



I 



CHAPTER XV 



THE RAID 



The union of South Africa had ever been the principal 
object of Rhodes's colonial policy. Without union he felt 
that all his achievements in the north, all his success in 
drawing Dutch and EngUsh closer together at the Cape 
were maimed and incomplete. He was the first to recognize 
that the obstacles to union were great : the antagonism 
between the Dutch and EngUsh races, the strong national 
feehng in the Transvaal and the almost equally strong 
particularism of Natal, the difference in native poHcy 
between the Cape and the other states, even the hostile 
customs tariffs and antagonistic railway policies, from which 
union was the only escape, all were being used as entrench- 
ments behind which the separatist tendency in each colony 
or state was constantly gaining fresh strength. From the 
outset Rhodes had recognized that such obstacles could 
not be surmounted or even circumvented by any sudden 
stroke, but that patience, tact and faith were essential to 
achieve his purpose. And for many years he had displayed 
all three qualities to an eminent degree. The faith that 
union would come never forsook him ; his tact in appre- 
ciating the value of the Dutch and the need of bringing 
about union with their co-operation and goodwill had 
been exceptional for an Englishman ; and his patience 
had been learned in the hard school of Kimberley and 
in his early dealings with Van Niekerk and the blood- 
thirsty Groot Adriaan De la Rey. " It took me twenty 
years to amalgamate the diamond mines," he told the Bond 

242 



THE RAID 243 

in 1891 ; " that amalgamation was done by detail, step by 
step . . . and so your union must be done by detail, never 
opposing any single measure that can bring that union 
closer, giving up even some practical advantage for a 
proper union, educating your children to the fact that it 
is your policy and that you must and will have it, telhng 
it them and teaching it them in your district Bestuurs and 
households. ... In connection with this question I may 
meet with opposition ; but if I do I shall not abandon it." 
As we have seen, he had been as good as his word and had 
gone some v/ay towards mitigating the bitterness of racial 
feeling by his moderating influence as Prime Minister. He 
it was who tried to soothe the indignation of the Cape 
Dutch farmers at the Transvaal's outrageous tariffs ; he 
had succeeded, where others had failed, in inducing Kruger 
to admit the Cape trunk Unes into the Transvaal, and by 
his native legislation had paved the way for a better under- 
standing on this radical cause of disagreement. 

Already by 1894 he was looked up to as the one hope 
for a settlement of South African differences on federal 
lines. Albert Grey and other statesmen in England, who 
looked forward to this solution of the perennial race trouble, 
were eagerly watching his efforts in this direction ; he had 
Hofmeyr and the Bond with him ; he was always impressing 
on his Rhodesians that their destiny was to be merged in 
a united South Africa ; and even in Natal, stiU smarting 
from his Kokstad speech, there was a disposition to follow 
him. Albert Grey, after a visit to that colony in 1894, sends 
Rhodes the following message from Escombe, with the full 
concurrence of Escombe's rival, John Robinson, and of the 
Governor : " ' Inter-colonial and inter-state free trade in 
the produce of each colony and state ' is Natal's policy, 
and they look on you as their leader, recognizing you as the 
only person who can bring this about. If you will make 
this a fundamental part of your policy," adds Grey, " he 
will wheel his Colony into Hne behind you, engaging to carry 
his people in spite of the opposition of those who fear 
a customs-union means dear bread and cheap brandy for 
Natal. He says, * Let Rhodes, who has the statesmanship 
and imagination, strike a high note when he goes to Pretoria/ 






244 CECIL RHODES 

Small men might be turned away from the high advantages 
of this policy by narrow sectional self-interests, and be unable 
to go in for the big idea because they fear the Cape may 
suffer from the free import of Natal sugar, or that Natal 
may be drowned in cheap Cape wine and brandy, but he 
looks to you as strong enough to emancipate your people 
from the tyranny of low ideals. Under your leadership 
Escombe feels strong enough to do the same in Natal. 
Now is the time : the Colonies should not go hat in hand 
to the Republics but vice versa. But this is a dogged 
little EngUsh colony and it won't do to threaten them as 
you did in your Kokstad speech. You would make it 
much easier for Escombe to play up to you if you could find 
an opportunity of saying something sympathetic to Natal 
which will cause them to beheve that you have their interests 
at heart." 

Sentiment, however, far more than material causes, 
played, as is generally the case in national differences, the 
greatest part in perpetuating disunion in South Africa. It 
was unfortunate, from Rhodes's point of view, that before 
he came into the field with proposals for union, he had 
been forestalled by the Bond's original proposals. These 
included a RepubUcan form of government for South 
Africa, freed from all English tutelage and under its own 
flag. It is true the Bond had been persuaded by Hofmeyr 
to drop the Republican flag, but the idea was still cherished 
in many Dutch hearts, and was the only condition which 
Kruger, had he entertained union at all, would have 
accepted. To Rhodes such an idea was out of the ques- 
tion : he had no wish to cut adrift from England himself 
and was convinced that the English Cape colonists and Natal 
would never consent to it. He was once approached by 
Borckenhagen, the editor of a Dutch paper at Bloem- 
fontein, with the proposal that they should both work 
together for an independent South Africa. His reply was 
short and unmistakable : "I am neither a knave nor a fool. 
I should be a knave to leave my own people and a fool to 
join yours, because I should be hated by my own people 
and despised by yours." At the same time he was equally 
convinced that the Boer states would never willingly 



THE RAID 245 

part with their independence. The Free State had come 
to value an independence originally thrust upon them ; the 
Transvaal cherished theirs the more dearly for having lost 
and then regained it. 

To overcome this sentimental difficulty, Rhodes's pro- 
posal was to leave the Repubhcs their own flags and their 
independence in certain spheres of government, but for 
federal purposes to create a central government under the 
British flag. " I have my own views as to the future of 
South Africa," he said as far back as 1883, " and I believe 
in a United States of South Africa, but as a portion of the 
British Empire. I beheve that confederated states in a 
colony under responsible government would each be practi- 
cally an independent RepubHc, but I think we should also 
have all the privileges of the tie with the Empire." Again, 
in one of his first public speeches as Prime Minister, he said : 
" I know myself that I am not prepared to forfeit at any 
time my own flag. I repeat I am not prepared at any time 
to forfeit my own flag. If I forfeit my flag, what have I 
left ? If you take away my flag, you take away everything. 
Holding this view, I cannot but feel the same respect for 
the neighbouring states, where men have been born under 
Repubhcan institutions and with Repubhcan feelings." In 
the following year, in his speech to the Bond at Kimberley, 
he had deplored the mistakes of the past, which had led to 
the creation of independent states, and took the occasion 
of some criticisms ehcited by this speech to restate his views 
on union to President Reitz : 

" I hear from so many quarters that the meaning of a 
portion of my speech at Kimberley has been so misunder- 
stood at Bloemfontein that I think, in justice to myself, I 
should state the views I expressed as to our future relations 
with the neighbouring RepubUcs. I simply repeated what 
I have repeatedly said before, that our efforts should be to 
obtain with them a customs union, railway communication, 
and free trade in the products of the country, always re- 
specting their independence and never in any way attempting 
to undermine that position, in the same way as I felt sure 
they would not attempt to interfere with our relations with 
our Mother Country. It is perfectly true that I also stated 






246 CECIL RHODES 

that if we were all to commence again to civilize Africa, 
starting from Cape Town, I think we should all agree that it 
would have been better for the people of South Africa to 
have had one system from Cape Town to the Zambesi, and 
I used the Une of argument m reference to the North Exten- 
sion being made on a friendly understanding with the system 
of the people of the Old Colony, so that [we] . . . should 
not repeat the policy of fifty years ago of practically forcing 
the voortrekers ... to form an independent system. . . . 
Through the errors and blunders of the then Government 
these people were forced to part company from [their] 
compatriots, to strike out for themselves and seek reHef 
elsewhere." ^ 

Kruger and the Transvaal were the greatest obstacle 
to the attainment of even this modified form of union. 
With the old President, do what he would, Rhodes seemed 
fated to be in almost continual conflict. First it had been 
Bechuanaland ; then Swaziland, the Adendorff trek, railway 
construction and customs had followed, though both in 
Bechuanaland and in Rhodesia Rhodes had made it plain 
that he welcomed Transvaal subjects if they would acknow- 
ledge British laws. But behind all these difficulties, some of 
which were easily susceptible of arrangement, there loomed 
a vital difference of outlook best illustrated by the great 
Uitlander question. Kruger' s predominant idea was to keep 
his RepubHc unpolluted by British interference or British 
ideas, and his conduct to the gold-diggers of the Transvaal was 
a natural outcome of this idea. There they were, 80,000 of 
them, chiefly of EngHsh birth and already four times the 
number of his burghers, and more of them flowing in : he 
could not drive them out, nor did he really desire to do so, for 
their activities had raised the Transvaal from bankruptcy to 
the height of affluence. The Rand taxes produced nineteen- 
twentieths of the state's total revenue, which, since the 
discovery of gold, had risen from £178,000 to nearly three 
miUions. But without driving them out and so cutting off 
this bountiful source of supply, Kruger could at least make 

^ From an incomplete draft in Rhodes's handwriting. I have struck 
out a few words and added two, in square brackets, in the last few lines, 
to bring out the sense . 



THE RAID 247 

them feel that they were intruders of httle more account 
politically than the natives. The franchise law of the 
Transvaal, most hberal before the discovery of the Rand, 
had been so restricted that it had become impossible for an 
Uitlander to obtain a vote in the country to which he 
contributed most of the revenue ; ^ he had no control even 
over the affairs of the city he had founded and built up, 
for Johannesburg was still treated as a mining camp under 
a mining commissioner. The language of instruction in the 
State schools of Johannesburg, supported by the Uitlanders' 
rates, was Dutch, and Enghshmen who wanted their children 
instructed in their mother tongue had in addition to pay 
heavy fees at a private school. Though denied the ordinary 
rights of citizenship and treated as an aUen, the Uitlander 
was nevertheless Uable to be impressed for service in native 
wars, as occurred in 1894. He also had more material 
grievances. The wealth he had brought to the Transvaal 
had attracted a swarm of needy adventurers, who buzzed 
round Kruger as if he had been a second Lo Bengula, and 
extracted from him all manner of concessions at the expense 
of the gold-mining community. A specially iniquitous con- 
cession was that for the manufacture of dynamite, which 
was not really made in the country, but imported by the 
monopohsts, and then sold at such a price to the mines that 
it was equivalent to an extra tax on the industry of £600,000. 
Another set of adventurers obtained the concession for carry- 
ing coal along the Rand, which they did at almost prohibitive 
rates : the group owning the hquor concession succeeded in 
passing a hquor law, with so few restrictions that the natives 
on the mines were being rapidly debauched. So strong, 
indeed, was the influence of the monopohsts that a judge 
who ventured to give a decision adverse to one of these 
concessions was promptly dismissed by Kruger. Even 
Van Oordt, the President's partial biographer, is driven to 
admit the scandal caused by the unprincipled crew who 
beset the old man's stoep and the lobbies of the Volksraad 
in search of every conceivable concession. The scandal was 

^ By a law of July 1894 it was made practically impossible for anybody 
not settled in the Transvaal before 1876 or the son of a burgher to obtain 
a vote ; whereas burghers obtained the vote at the age of sixteen. 



248 CECIL RHODES 

all the greater because the beneficiaries were not even his 
own ignorant burghers, but foreigners from Holland, 
Germany and any other country but England, far less 
likely to become loyal and permanent settlers in the Trans- 
vaal than the Uitlanders themselves. 

Foohsh as Kruger's treatment of the Uitlanders was, 
it was wisdom compared with his fiscal policy to the Cape, 
whereby he did all he could to ahenate his best friends. He 
would not hear of entering the Customs Union, which even 
the Free State had joined, and did his utmost to exclude Cape 
produce from the Transvaal. Colonial pigs, brandy, cattle 
and coal could be imported only on payment of fantastic 
duties. His railway pohcy was equally obstructive : he 
finally consented to the Cape system crossing the Vaal only 
when his own railway was in such desperate financial straits 
that he was obliged to accept for it a subsidy from the Cape 
and in return to allow the extension to Johannesburg. Even 
when the extension had been made, fresh difficulties arose 
about the rates, which he put up so high on this section that 
the goods were almost forced round to the rival Delagoa Bay 
route. In 1894 Rhodes had a conversation with Kruger at 
Pretoria on this point, but without avail. " I told him," was 
Rhodes's version of the interview, " it was contrary to the 
spirit of our agreement that he should go and raise the rates, 
and he said he had the right to do it. I said, * Well, this is 
rather breaking the spirit of the convention ; it is most unfair. 
We lent you jf 700, 000 to build this fine when you could 
get it from nobody else. The result was that Rothschilds 
lent you one and a half millions to complete the Delagoa 
Bay railway, and as soon as you have got that fine you 
have broken the spirit of the convention.' He said he did 
not care, he should raise the rates. I warned him, * If you 
do not take care, you wiU have the whole of South Africa 
against you. You are a very strong man ; but there are 
things you may do which wiU bring the whole of the Cape 
Colony and the north, and indeed the whole of South Africa 
against you, and so strongly that you will not be able to 
stand against it.' " 

This question of railway rates was to Rhodes's mind the 
strongest illustration of the need for union. It was not 






THE RAID 249 

merely a duel between the Cape and the Transvaal for cheap 
rates, but Natal also came in as a competitor for the 
Johannesburg traffic, and in the rate war of 1894 Kruger 
was able to play off the Natal hne as well as his own against 
Rhodes. " I am sometimes told," said Rhodes to the 
Cape House, " that the question of South Africa at the 
present moment is the question of a united South Africa ; 
others say it is scab or labour or stock-thefts, but I think it 
is the settlement of tariffs between Delagoa Bay, Durban 
and the ports of Cape Colony, because if we do not settle 
these tariffs it will be ruinous for us all." But he would not 
be driven hastily to acts of reprisal. " The Transvaal is 
foolish," he admitted, " but we should not be foolish too. 
Let us look at it with sorrow, and hope the Transvaal will 
change. . . . Our waggons, fruit, wine, butter and cattle 
are being taxed as in the past. But do not let us lose our 
tempers over it. The Transvaal and President Kruger will 
have to consider whether a system should continue which 
refuses nine-tenths of the population under it the franchise 
and which refuses to a friendly state, which helped it in the 
time of need [i.e. in 1881], any commercial advantages, and 
which says : * We will have nothing you can produce.' Is 
it possible to maintain an action of that kind ? If the 
President succeeds in doing so, he would be the most re- 
markable man since the commencement of the world, because 
such a position is impossible. Still, all we can do is to 
negotiate anew and maintain a statesmanhke and dignified 
position." 

Up to the end of 1894 the struggle between Rhodes and 
Kruger had been straight and open. The antagonism of 
the two men was quite intelligible. Kruger' s one aim was 
to keep his Transvaal a sanctuary for his chosen people ; if 
the aHen gold-seekers liked to bring wealth into the country, 
well and good, but there must stop their privileges. Rhodes 
was one of these ahens, for he had some of the largest gold- 
interests on the Rand. Besides, Kruger felt that he had 
legitimate grievances against the nation of which Rhodes 
was the outstanding figure in South Africa. Though he 
had loyally carried out his promise to Hofmeyr in 1890 to 
damp down the Adendorff trek as a condition for the first 



250 CECIL RHODES 

Swaziland convention, he had two more conventions to sign 
before the matter was finally settled. And even then, 
though he had at first been led to expect that he might take 
a railway through that country to the sea, he found all his 
hopes dashed by England's annexation of the intervening 
territories, besides the ports of Kosi Bay and St. Lucia. 
He felt himself hemmed in by the English north, south, east 
and west, and he feared and hated Rhodes, because he 
knew that his adversary's aim was to destroy the isolation in 
which he gloried. Rhodes opposed Kruger not from any 
animosity to his race — on the contrary, no Englishman of 
his time appreciated and sympathized more with the Boers — 
but because he saw in the other's obstinate determination 
to keep alive the old bitter feehng, which had prompted 
the great Boer trek, the main obstacle to harmony between 
the races. He had been fighting Kruger ever since he 
engaged in politics, and hitherto had generally got the 
better of him. It was an unequal contest between the 
man of modern ideas, the owner of millions, backed 
by the greatest Empire in the world, and the solitary 
old man, strong only in the obstinacy with which he 
clung to the ideas of his childhood. But though the con- 
test was unequal, the victory was not yet won. Rhodes 
had been very patient and forbearing, but his patience 
had limits, and already he had shown the fatal weakness 
of underrating his adversary. Utterances such as "I 
pity the man," " the President must have been a very 
disappointed man," are jarring notes in his otherwise skilful 
diplomacy, and they are the premonitory signals of that 
vl3pt<;, as the Greeks called it, which so often attends success" 
so overwhelming as his. 

Rhodes must have exercised enormous self-control to 
display the patience he did in some of the most important 
affairs of his life, for his was a turbulent, volcanic nature, 
more naturaUy disposed to brush aside or crush opposition 
than to " sit down and argue with it " ; and sometimes, in 
spite of all precautions, or perhaps because he thought a 
pose of brutality would serve his purpose best, the natural 
man had blazed out. But by 1895 a subtle change was 
coming over him : he was losing some of his powers of self- 



IN 



THE RAID 251 

restraint and of waiting upon the occasion. His health 
was partly to blame. Although his big burly form seemed 
to have overcome the early disposition to consumption, he 
had recently had warnings of the heart trouble which in 
the end was to prove fatal. At the end of 1891 he broke 
his collar-bone and had a bad attack of influenza, which 
gave some anxiety to his friends — " The thought of where 
we should be if we were to be deprived of the help of 
your brain and guiding hand is an ugly sort of nightmare," 
wrote Grey — and he never afterwards quite recovered his 
elasticity. He himself had no illusions : he used often to 
say that he would not Hve beyond forty- five, and that, 
within his few remaining years, he must accomplish all 
he still had left unfinished. With this obsession upon him, 
he began to feel that the time for patient and laborious 
methods was past and to give rein to his natural impatience. 
Power, too, and success had begun to spoil him. He became 
strangely arrogant : old friends noted with pain the change 
from his former simple and boyish good-fellowship to the 
almost pompous and overweening attitude of the later 
Rhodes. " Newspapers," he once roared out ; "do you 
think I care a continental fig what the newspapers may say ? 
I am strong enough to do what I choose in spite of the whole 
pack of them." He was beginning to say in his heart that 
he was not as other men, but Hke a god, and that he had only 
to say, it shall be so, and it was so. This arrogant spirit 
was encouraged and pampered by his surroundings. He had 
turned away or lost many of his old friends, and in their 
place had come a horde of flatterers, secretaries and second- 
rate Dutchmen, who hved on him and treated him as Canute 
was treated by his courtiers. At the Burhngton his ante- 
chamber was thronged, like my Lord Chesterfield's, with 
needy parasites in search of a favour ; and the Dr. Johnsons 
too rarely found access. At the Cape he was jealously 
shielded by secretaries and cronies from the rude blasts 
of outside opinion, and his every word received as an 
oracle. His court was specially remarkable for its array of 
doctors " I hke doctors for my work, because their calhng 
gives them such an insight into humanity," was his pohte 
way of accounting for this taste : his more brutal explanation 



252 CECIL RHODES 

was : ** because, when there is blood-letting to be done, 
they are less squeamish." Such brutal sayings should not be 
taken too literally : Rhodes always took a malicious dehght 
in trying to epater le bourgeois and shock the unco guid by 
such remarks, which he did not mean very seriously. In the 
same way, though he enjoyed flattery, he was able to take 
it at its proper valuation, and turn to serious and well-tried 
friends, Jameson, Beit or Grey, in times of real trouble and 
stress. But, like all forceful men, when he had once mapped 
out his course, he preferred for his agents those who would 
not trouble him with arguments, but simply get on with 
the work. 

His relations with the Governor illustrate well his growing 
impatience of contradiction. Sir Henry Loch and he had 
never hit it off. Rhodes suspected the High Commissioner of 
desiring to curtail his privileges and freedom of action in 
Bechuanaland and Rhodesia ; nor was Loch always tactful 
in his dealings with his formidable Prime Minister ; for he 
rarely forgot that he was the representative of Royalty or 
remembered that Rhodes was not a man to whom you could 
apply the ordinary rules. At any rate Rhodes was not 
displeased to hear in 1895 that Loch was averse to returning 
from his leave in England. His own choice for a successor 
was his old friend Sir Hercules Robinson, Loch's predecessor, 
with whom he had always worked well. There were objec- 
tions to Sir Hercules, for he had been recalled for his remarks 
on the Imperial factor, he was getting old, and also he was 
thought to be too closely connected with De Beers and other 
South African companies. But Lord Ripon and Mr. Buxton 
were naturally much influenced by the Cape Prime Minister's 
opinion and accepted his view that Robinson would be the 
best Governor they could find to work harmoniously with 
Hofmeyr and the Dutch : so, in spite of some protests in 
the House of Commons, Robinson was chosen.^ The new 
Governor was well aware that he owed his renewed term 
very largely to Rhodes ; but his gratitude was doubtless 
tempered with some apprehension. " I file that letter," 

1 It is interesting to find that in April 1895 Chamberlain, though 
not yet in office, was informally consulted as to Robinson's appointment 
to the Cape and made no objection. 



THE RAID 253 

was his caustic comment on Rhodes's pledge in his letter 
of congratulation : " If we come to disagree on anything, 
I promise to take that as indicating that I am wrong." 
On his side Rhodes was maturing plans which required the 
presence of a sympathetic Governor. 



II 

Whatever may have been the cause — flatterers, fear of 
death or natural impatience — a period came in Rhodes's 
relations with Kruger when he felt there was nothing more 
to be gained by open diplomacy. This conviction was 
borne in upon him gradually. On customs and railway 
rates he never had any real anxiety ; the colonists held the 
whip-hand of Kruger in those matters when, as now, they 
were united. But the Uit lander question was a different 
matter. The indignation of the Uitlanders, mostly men of 
British birth, had been gradually rising at their failure 
to obtain any redress for their grievances. Twice the 
President received serious warning that they were not to 
be trifled with indefinitely : once at Johannesburg in 1890, 
when an angry mob surrounded his lodging and trampled 
on the Republican flag ; and again at Pretoria four years 
later, when a rowdy crowd took out the horses and dragged 
the carriage, in which Sir Henry Loch and he were seated, 
and waved a Union Jack over his head. But the only 
answer he vouchsafed them was to impose further restric- 
tions on their liberty. A law was passed forbidding meet- 
ings of more than six persons ; and when in 1894 and 1895 
they presented largely signed petitions to the Volksraad 
for the redress of grievances, they were received with 
jeers and told that if they wanted the franchise they must 
fight for it. Kruger did indeed withdraw the commandeer- 
ing order in 1894 on Loch's stern representations, but 
immediately afterwards began casting about for means of 
strengthening his position. 

In the first place he very largely increased his military 
budget, spending most of the money on supplies of guns and 
rifles. He also sought external alliances. Since 1872 he 
had been trying to enter into a defensive alliance with 



254 CECIL RHODES 

the Free State, without success during President Brand's 
lifetime ; but after Brand's death he had found his 
successor Reitz ready to sign a treaty of mutual guarantee 
against aggression. He had also sought a more powerful 
ally. In the autumn of 1894 he had sent his State Secretary, 
Mr. Leyds, to sound Germany, where he had been so well 
received himself in 1883. Leyds seems to have met with 
an encouraging reception, so encouraging that at a banquet 
of the German Club in January 1895 Kruger proposed the 
Emperor's health, and said he knew he could thenceforward 
count on the Germans. " I feel certain," he added, " that 
when the time comes for the Republic to wear larger clothes 
[i.e., presumably, to shake off all English tutelage], you 
Germans will have done much to bring it about. . . . The 
time is coming for our friendship to be nxore firmly estab- 
lished than ever." 

This speech aroused once more all Rhodes's apprehen- 
sions of German interference in South Africa, and he 
afterwards attributed his participation in the plot against 
the Transvaal Government largely to this cause. Moreover, 
as managing director of one of the chief companies on the 
Rand, he was naturally concerned at the unrest in Johannes- 
burg, and during his visit to Kruger in 1894 on the railway 
question had discovered from conversation with Leonard, 
Hays Hammond and other friends that there was every 
chance of a spontaneous rising against the Government. 
Sir Henry Loch, too, after his recent experience at Pretoria, 
had been convinced of the danger, and had actually had 
a force of police ready on the Bechuanaland border to 
act in case of emergency. Early in 1895 both he and 
Rhodes had warned the Colonial Office. But as yet there 
was no organized plot. The leaders of the gold industry 
did not, as one of them said, care a fig for the vote ; they 
were only troubled at the hindrance and loss to their 
business caused by the dynamite and other concessions, 
and pinned their faith chiefly on what was euphemistically 
called an " election fund " for securing a more friendly 
Volksraad. Such men feared Rhodes's impulsive nature 
and were obviously much relieved when Beit advised them 
in 1894 not to consult him on their difficulties. The chief 



THE RAID 255 

agitators for more drastic action were some of the working 
men and the business people who intended to make their 
homes in Johannesburg ; but both Rhodes and Loch saw 
that they were as sheep without a shepherd and had neither 
arms nor plans for a successful revolt. The conviction 
was gradually forced upon Rhodes that if the rising was 
not to be a fiasco he must himself take a hand in it. 
He had a third motive for action : a fear that unless the 
movement were directed on the right lines it might impede 
rather than advance his own plans for union, by simply 
replacing a Boer by a British Republic. " You might be 
sure, sir," was his comment on this idea, " that I was not 
going to risk my position to change President Kruger for 
President J. B. Robinson." 

Early in 1895, therefore, Rhodes decided to organize the 
rising in Johannesburg and ensure its success. At first he 
took only a few people into his confidence. With Beit he 
arranged to share the expenses ; Hawkesley, the Chartered 
Company's solicitor, Mr. Maguire and a few others in 
London were let into the secret ; there were one or two 
chosen confidants in Johannesburg ; Jameson, the adminis- 
trator of Southern Rhodesia, and Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, 
the Cape Town secretary of the Chartered Company, were to 
take an active part in the conspiracy. In taking this decision 
judgement and the sense of honour had alike deserted Rhodes ; 
for as Prime Minister of the Cape and managing director 
of the Chartered Company he had no business to interfere 
with the internal affairs of a friendly state except on behalf 
of his Colony or of Rhodesia. As it was, from the outset 
he placed himself in a false position. To ensure the success 
of a revolt two factors had to be considered : a supply of 
arms for Johannesburg and the provision of a force on the 
border ready to enter the Transvaal and support the rebels 
at the first signal of a rising. Rhodes proposed as a private 
individual to buy and smuggle into the Transvaal arms 
which it was his duty as Prime Minister to stop, and by the 
use of his authority as managing director of the Chartered 
Company secretly to place a force on the border for a 
purpose entirely alien to the trust imposed on him by the 
Crown. 



256 CECIL RHODES 

The Chartered Company was at that time so uncontrolled 
in its actions that no difficulty was anticipated in secretly 
concentrating a force of police ready to enter the Transvaal 
at the right moment ; but they had no good " jumping-off 
ground." The most suitable trysting-place was in the 
neighbourhood of Mafeking ; but that region was still 
directly under the Crown. Already, however, before he 
had embarked on his plans for a Johannesburg rising, 
Rhodes had been trying to obtain the transfer of the whole 
of Bechuanaland from Imperial control. With respect to 
the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, memorable to 
him for his early associations with Stellaland and Goshen, 
he had no difficulty. The British Government had always 
been ready to hand it over to the Cape, when that Govern- 
ment was prepared to undertake the administration. 
Accordingly, when Rhodes proffered the request, Lord 
Ripon raised no objection ; and the terms of transfer were 
finally settled by his successor, Mr. Chamberlain. In 
August 1895, therefore, ten years after his lament over the 
Cape's lost opportunity through Warren's policy, Rhodes 
had the satisfaction of passing in the Cape House an Act 
for the annexation of British Bechuanaland. Although 
Rhodes came in for some friendly criticism on the provisions 
required by Chamberlain, limiting the Cape's right of inter- 
fering with the natives, and was told that he had been 
worsted in his first encounter with the new Secretary of State, 
the Colony made a very good bargain ; for it took over this 
new province without being asked to repay to the Imperial 
Government an}^ part of the large sum spent on its develop- 
ment. But this addition to the Colony still gave Rhodes no 
satisfactory jumping-off ground, for he had no right to post 
his Rhodesian force in Cape territory : for this he required 
a footing for the Chartered Company in the Protectorate. 

The Bechuanaland Protectorate was in fact within the 
Company's sphere of operations, which in the Charter was 
defined as all the region to the north of Mafeking : but, 
although they already possessed nearly all the concessions 
there, they had not hitherto been granted powers of 
administration. In a letter to the Duke of Abercorn Loch 
had thus explained the position : " An enormous area was 



THE RAID 257 

included in the Charter and if all had to be taken up and 
worked at once, the Company would have required a capital 
of nearer £5,000,000 than one, but the position, as I under- 
stand it, is this. The B.S.A. Company were to establish 
themselves first in Mashonaland and develop the wealth of 
that country before embarking in further liabilities ; the 
Imperial Government in the meanwhile administering the 
remainder of the country under the High Commissioner 
with as much economy as the necessities of the position 
permitted, so that the Company might have breathing 
time to gradually feel their way and establish themselves 
in Lo Bengula's country before undertaking further 
responsibilities." But apart from any ulterior designs, 
this arrangement did not suit Rhodes at all. He suspected 
Loch and the Imperial Government of an attempt to cozen 
him out of his rights, and, in his letter of November 1894 
to Lord Ripon asking when the engagement to the Company 
was going to be fulfilled, remarked with some asperity 
that he would never have undertaken the railway north- 
wards had he thought he was not to control the Protectorate. 
Lord Rosebery's Government had no objection to giving 
Rhodes what he asked, but they were already tottering to 
their fall and were afraid of taking a decision that might 
arouse opposition. For Rhodes and the Company still had 
enemies : their financial operations were sharply criticized, 
and the Exeter Hall party distrusted their native poUcy 
none the less for the Matabele campaign. Accordingly 
Ripon put off a decision until the Government's defeat 
on cordite in June 1895 left the matter over for his successor. 
In the new Secretary of State, Joseph Chamberlain, 
Rhodes met a man no less masterful and with even greater 
means of exercising authority than himself. Unlike Lord 
Ripon, whose official existence depended on a precarious 
majority of some thirty votes. Chamberlain had at his 
back an overwhelming majority in the country. He had 
come to the Colonial Office, not as most previous Secretaries, 
because their services to the party did not entitle them to 
a more important department, but of his own deliberate 
choice and with a settled purpose of making its true import- 
ance appear. He was not one to fall under the influence 

S 



258 CECIL RHODES 

even of a Rhodes, as his two predecessors had unconsciously 
done : he had formerly distrusted him ; ^ and though he 
had come to sympathize with many of his aspirations, he 
had no idea, even in carrying out any objects they might 
have in common, of allowing Joseph Chamberlain to play 
second fiddle to Cecil Rhodes. Politely but firmly he 
indicated this in his answer to Rhodes's letter of congratula- 
tion on his appointment ; and he very soon made it evident 
that, though willing to honour his predecessor's promise to 
transfer the Crown Colony to the Cape, he had no immediate 
intention of handing over the Bechuanaland Protectorate 
to the Company. So Rhodes had to try another tack, and 
commissioned Dr. Rutherfoord Harris, then acting as his 
agent in London, to secure a strip on the Protectorate 
border for the purposes of railway construction. 

Before the negotiations for this strip, however, were con- 
cluded. Chamberlain gave a foretaste of his decisive methods 
and of the control he intended to exercise in South Africa, 
when Imperial interests were concerned. The rates war with 
Kruger was still dragging on without much prospect of settle- 
ment. When the Transvaal railway manager had proposed to 
put up the rate from the Vaal above 6d. a ton, in order to 
kill the Cape traffic, Kruger had light-heartedly urged him 
to make it is. Thereupon the traders in desperation forsook 
the railway at the Free State border and carried their goods 
over the short stretch to Johannesburg in bullock- waggons. 
Not to be outdone, Kruger proclaimed that the Vaal drifts, 
by which they had to cross, would be closed. This last 
stroke united all parties at the Cape against the obstinate 
old President, and Rhodes carried even the Bond members 
of his Ministry with him in appealing to Chamberlain to 
take action against what his Attorney-General, Schreiner, 
declared to be a breach of the London Convention. 
Chamberlain took the same view and described the Presi- 
dent's act as ** almost . . . one of hostility " ; he also 
declared his willingness to back up a protest by a display of 
force, on condition the Cape Government undertook to pay 
half the cost ; for " Her Majesty's Government," he stated 
in the despatch, " do not intend that such an expedition 

^ See Chap. X. p. 136. 



THE RAID 259 

should, like most previous colonial wars, be conducted 
solely at the Mother Country's expense." Rhodes did not 
quite relish the condition, but recognized that Chamberlain 
was not to be trifled with, and secured the consent of his 
Cabinet. No force was needed, for Kruger saw he had gone 
too far and climbed down. 

The negotiations between Chamberlain and the Colonial 
Office on the one hand, and Dr. Harris and the other Chartered 
Company's agents on the other, have been a subject of such 
acute controversy that it is essential to bring out as clearly 
as possible the conditions under which they were conducted. 
When Chamberlain entered upon them, he had held the 
seals of office only a few weeks and was barely posted in 
the outlines of the case he had to deal with. He found that 
his predecessors Knutsford and Ripon had pledged them- 
selves more than once that the Protectorate should ulti- 
mately revert to the Company. But the date of cession 
had been left open, and Chamberlain himself was anxious 
to postpone it, for he had a firm belief that, where natives 
were concerned, the Imperial Government's rule was the 
fairest, and he himself, unlike some of his predecessors, had 
no fear of shouldering responsibility. In this view he was 
confirmed by the extreme unwillingness he found in the 
principal Bechuana chiefs, Khama, Sebele and Bathoen, to 
exchange Imperial protection for that of the Company, and 
by the enlightened government of Khama himself. He 
also felt that the Company already had quite as much terri- 
tory to administer as they could manage for the time being, 
and that any sudden increase " would," as he drily remarked, 
" be deemed by any person of administrative experience to 
contain in itself the elements of failure." On the other hand, 
he had great ideas of developing the empire by railways and 
other means, and kept pressing Rhodes to fulfil his engage- 
ment to continue the extension of the railway northwards. 
To this demand Harris's answer, on behalf of Rhodes, was 
that for a railway he must have at least a strip of territory 
along the Protectorate border under the Company's complete 
control ; and to this, in principle, Chamberlain at once agreed. 
The other outstanding question in South Africa to Chamber- 
lain's mind was the trouble in Johannesburg. The Colonial 



26o CECIL RHODES 

Office had long been aware that a rising might at any 
moment occur, and that the Imperial Government might 
be called upon to interfere in the interests of peace in South 
Africa. Loch's action in having a body of police on the 
border in 1894 was fully approved, and next year Lord 
Ripon and Mr. Buxton had discussed with Sir Hercules 
what steps he should take. It had been arranged by them 
that, if Johannesburg revolted, he should at once go to the 
Transvaal and have a sufficient force at hand to ensure 
respect for the advice he might proffer. On assuming office, 
Chamberlain had confirmed these instructions and arranged 
that troops should be available, if required.^ By his prompt 
and decisive attitude on the Drifts question he showed that, 
if necessary, he was prepared to strike hard. 

Dr. Harris, Mr. Maguire, Hawkesley and Albert Grey 
carried on the negotiations with the Colonial Office on 
behalf of the Chartered Company. The first three certainly, 
probably the last, knew what was foremost in Rhodes's 
mind in his anxiety to obtain the border-strip, though the 
ostensible reason was simply to facilitate the railway con- 
struction. Of these agents Dr. Harris took the leading part. 
By his own account, he was the repository of nearly all 
Rhodes's secrets. " I do not think,** he told the South 
Africa Committee, " anybody was more intimately associated 
with all Mr. Rhodes's affairs, private, political and public, 
than I was. I did everything for him." If that was so, 
it does not indicate much discrimination on Rhodes's part. 
Dr. Harris was an extremely able and energetic secretary 
to the Company, a very successful man of business, and a 
good whip to Rhodes's party in the Cape Parliament ; and 
Rhodes was no doubt grateful to him for his readiness to 
take trouble off his shoulders. But he had little acquaint- 
ance with large political questions, and was certainly not 
of the calibre to deal on equal terms with a leading English 
statesman. He came to the business so full of Rhodes's 
plan of putting an emergency force on the border that he 
seems to have worked himself quite sincerely into the belief 

^ For several months the troopships conveying drafts to or from India 
were ordered, instead of going through the Suez Canal, to take the longer 
course round Africa and call for orders at the Cape. 



THE RAID 261 

that any one with whom he discussed the possibility of a 
revolution or the railway strip was as much aware of the 
secret scheme as he was himself. He and some of the others 
in the secret certainly confided it to Miss Flora Shaw of The 
Times, with the expectation that she would prepare the 
way discreetly ; and she even went so far as to draw up a 
memorandum for The Times correspondents abroad that 
they might know the line to take when the rising occurred. 
A few privileged individuals in society were also admitted 
into the secret, and a favourable atmosphere of vague 
expectation was created. Frequent visits were paid to 
the Colonial Office and long conversations were held with 
Fairfield, the head of the South African section, on Chartered 
Company business. In these conversations the state 
of Johannesburg, the possibihty of a rising and even the 
attitude to be adopted in face of such a rising were not 
unnaturally touched upon ; and Dr. Harris certainly received 
the impression that Fairfield was more aware of Rhodes's 
particular plan than he actually was. 

Chamberlain himself met Harris only twice. The first 
time was in August, when the question of the strip was first 
discussed, and Chamberlain agreed that if Rhodes could 
come to terms with the various chiefs concerned he might 
have his railway strip, leaving large reserves for the natives. 
At this interview Harris tried the effect on Chamberlain of 
what he called a " guarded allusion." According to his 
own account, he hinted " in confidence " that troops placed 
at a certain point on the border might be useful in case of a 
rising in Johannesburg. But Chamberlain cut him off very 
short, telling him coldly that he wanted no confidences from 
him, as the High Commissioner could be trusted to give him 
all necessary information ; he did not catch his allusion to 
troops, and had obviously no inkling of Harris's real meaning. 
The second interview in November was at a purely formal 
meeting attended also by the Bechuana chiefs, when there 
was no opportunity for * * guarded allusions. ' ' At this meeting 
Chamberlain, with the consent of the chiefs, handed over 
the border strip to the Company on terms which he justi- 
fiably regarded as very advantageous to the country. In 
return for the six-mile strip along the Livingstone road. 



262 CECIL RHODES 

the Company agreed to the creation of large reserves for 
the natives under the High Commissioner, to abandon their 
claim to a subsidy of ;f 10,000 a year for the railway, promised 
them by Ripon, and even to save the Imperial Government 
the large expenditure on the Bechuanaland police by under- 
taking responsibility for the security of the strip and the 
border. On Rhodes's representation that it was essential 
to secure immediate protection for the construction parties. 
Chamberlain allowed him to recruit for the Company's 
pohce from the disbanded Imperial police, and to collect an 
adequate force at Pitsani, a few miles north of Mafeking. 

Rhodes had thus obtained the " jumping-off ground " 
he needed ; not a day too soon, for the Johannesburg rising 
had been timed for December ; — though at a price of which 
he complained in no measured terms to Dr. Harris. But 
he was also brought to believe that he had the indirect 
approval of Chamberlain for his scheme. The hints and 
innuendoes made to Chamberlain and Fairfield were re- 
ported for all they were worth to South Africa, as well as 
Dr. Harris's optimistic impressions of the sense in which 
they were accepted. There is no doubt that Dr. Harris, 
and, chiefly through his reports, Rhodes and several of the 
other conspirators, were fully persuaded that their course of 
action was countenanced by Chamberlain. Rhodes himself 
was not one to insist on an expHcit sanction from those in 
authority in a case of difficulty. As he himself said to a 
young English officer whom he blamed for not exceeding 
instructions in Uganda : " You cannot expect a Prime 
Minister to write down that you are to seize ports, etc. 
But when he gives you orders to the contrary, disobey them." 
But there is not a tittle of evidence that either Chamberlain 
or the Colonial Office officials really understood, still less 
approved of, Rhodes's scheme. What Chamberlain certainly 
knew was that a rising in Johannesburg was probable, and 
he had provided for the intervention of the High Com- 
missioner in that case, and for a military force to support 
him, if necessary. It may even have occurred to him that 
the police on the border might possibly be called upon for 
assistance, though a man of Chamberlain's masterful nature, 
had he contemplated such a case, is much more likely to have 



THE RAID 263 

retained the police in his own hands. But that Chamberlain 
had any inkhng that Rhodes himself was actively plotting 
for the revolution, and that part of his plan was to send in 
a Rhodesian force as soon as the rising occurred is neither 
proved nor credible ; for the reports by Dr. Harris of his 
impressions are not evidence.^ 

HI 

While the discussions about the strip were going on, the 
rising in Johannesburg was being organized. Jameson paid 
several visits to the Rand to feel the ground before he finally 
broached the subject of Rhodes's plans to the leading 
members of the National Union, an organization started to 
secure rights for the Uitlanders. The arrangements then 
proposed and accepted were that 5000 rifles and a miUion 
rounds of ammunition should be smuggled in from Kimberley, 
that on the eve of the rising the arsenal at Pretoria should 
be surprised, and that at a given signal Jameson should 
cross the border at the head of 1500 men with guns and 
Maxims. The date tentatively fixed for the rising was 
December 28. The only doubt still left in the minds of the 
leaders was as to the flag under which the revolution should 
be carried out : the RepubHcan Vierkleur or the Union Jack. 
In other words, was the Transvaal to remain independent 
or be annexed to England ? Rhodes and Jameson were 
suspected of designing annexation ; the Johannesburg leaders 
were convinced that such a design spelt failure, for though 
the majority of the Uitlanders were English, many even 
of these, besides the Germans and Americans among them, 
had no wish to upset the Republican institutions, if their 
just grievances were removed. To clear up the point, a 
deputation went to see Rhodes in October. His answer 
was quite satisfactory : he had, he said, two objects in 
embarking on the revolution — first, to get rid of abuses which 
affected him as one of the largest mine-proprietors, and 
secondly, to obtain free trade with the other South African 
states. " That is what I want," he said, laying his finger 
on the word " free trade " in the Uitlanders' declaration of 

^ For a further discussion of this point see Chap. XVI. pp. 282-283. 



264 CECIL RHODES 

rights, " from that will flow a customs union, railway 
amalgamation and ultimately federation." He assured 
them further that he had no intention of changing the flag 
by violence, and that if a plebiscite after the revolution 
decided on a Republic he would not oppose it, provided the 
Republic came into close fiscal union with the rest of South 
Africa. It was, in fact, his old idea of independence for 
local affairs with the British flag for union. 

From this date preparations both in Johannesburg and 
on the border began in earnest. Rhodes himself, beyond 
providing the funds with Beit, took little active part, 
trusting to subordinates not always well chosen. His 
brother Frank, a cavalry colonel of exquisite charm but no 
business capacity, was sent in a nominal capacity on the 
Gold Fields, to take charge of the plot in Johannesburg. 
The Chartered Company's office at Cape Town was used as 
a clearing-house for messages to Rhodes and between 
Johannesburg and Jameson on the border ; officials of 
De Beers at Kimberley took an active part in smuggling 
arms over the border, concealed in oil-drums or under truck 
loads of coal, and in enrolling men, such as the " eleven 
fine diamonds" sent to Johannesburg in December, to stiffen 
the conspirators. A Dr. Wolff, another of Rhodes' s Kimberley 
doctors, was sent to the Transvaal to buy up stores and horses 
and place them at suitable points on the road between the 
border and Johannesburg, for the relief of Jameson's column. 
Touches of melodrama were introduced by mysterious 
agents, ostentatiously engaged on secret intrigues. A 
certain Captain Holden dropped one fine day from the 
clouds on a wretched forwarding agent at Port Elizabeth, 
who was so cowed by the other's formidable gift of silence 
that he at once complied with his demand on him to for- 
ward some oil-drums full of arms surreptitiously to Johannes- 
burg. " He was most extraordinary. He asked me to 
ask him as few questions as possible. I have never found 
a man so silent before. He was like an oyster," said the 
forwarding agent ; and he had never seen him before or 
since. The plot was referred to as the " flotation of the 
new company," or the " polo tournament," the conspirators 
as " subscribers " or *' shareholders," or what not, in the 



THE RAID 265 

telegrams these agents showered on one another. How 
Uttle Rhodes himself controlled the details of the plot is 
evident from his friends* testimony. " Mr. Rhodes was 
always trying to remember details, but he never could," 
said one of them. He did not even trouble to sign his own 
cheques, and contented himself with giving the vaguest 
instructions. " That is not the way Mr. Rhodes does things," 
Dr. Harris told Sir William Harcourt. " If Mr. Rhodes 
has an agent he trusts him and gives him carte blanche in 
that wa}^. He does not say, * If you think fit to do so and 
so, do it.' He says, ' You know the whole thing ; do the 
best you can, when the circumstances arise.' " 

The trouble about this method of conspiring is that the 
chief conspirator should have a very clear idea himself of 
his object and agents thoroughly to be trusted to carry 
out that idea. Unfortunately Rhodes was rather vague 
on the crucial question of the flag ; though he had not 
insisted on the revolt being under the Union Jack, he 
certainly had every hope, nay intention, that the Transvaal 
should vote itself British. In that sense he mav have 
spoken to his intimates. But Dr. Harris seems to have 
gone further and wanted the revolt itself to be a British 
affair, and, after his return from England in the middle of 
December, the Johannesburg leaders were becoming dis- 
quieted at rumours emanating from Cape Town of Rhodes's 
intention to insist from the outset on the British flag. 
Jameson, the appointed leader of the border force, was 
another who was incHned to interpret very largely any licence 
to "do the best he could when the circumstances arose." 

Gallant and devoted to Rhodes as Jameson was, he was 
naturally impetuous and self-confident, and none the less 
so for his recent success in Matabeleland ; and he was 
soon so much taken up with his own side of the plot that 
he began to forget the subsidiary role originally assigned to 
his force. The enrolment of its members had been proceed- 
ing apace since October, when a detachment of 250 Mashona- 
land mounted police was brought down to a camp at Pit- 
sani, in the six-mile strip, north of Mafeking.^ Recruits were 

^ This was possible at that date, as Rhodes had purchased from 
Montsioa a tract of land at Pitsani with Chamberlain's approval. 



266 CECIL RHODES 

obtained from Cape Colony, and by the end of December, 
when many of the disbanded Imperial poHce had joined him, 
Jameson had 600 men at Pitsani ; a well-equipped force, yet 
less than half the 1500 promised to the Johannesburg leaders. 
As military advisers he had Major Sir John Willoughby of 
the Horse Guards and some other British officers seconded 
for police work, who in April had conducted a secret 
reconnaissance of the country round Pretoria. If Jameson 
himself was rash, these regular officers gave him very little 
ballast ; all seem to have regarded the success of the 
expedition as a foregone conclusion and to have undertaken 
it with the light-hearted carelessness of cheery schoolboys. 
One curious precaution Jameson did take. He obtained 
from the Johannesburg leaders a letter of invitation to 
himself, which described the disturbed and discontented 
state of the city, the likeHhood of a conflict with the 
Government and the consequent danger to " thousands 
of unarmed men, women and children ... at the mercy 
of well-armed Boers," and concluded with a request that 
he should come to their help if a disturbance took place. 
The date of the letter was purposely left blank ; Jameson 
was to fill it in when he started and use its appeal for the 
helpless women and children as a justification for invading 
the Boers' territory. As a further safeguard to his officers 
Jameson felt justified in assuring Willoughby in general 
terms of the Imperial authorities' goodwill to the scheme ; 
and Willoughby passed on these assurances to the others. 
Jameson based his belief partly, no doubt, on the optimistic 
reports sent from London about Chamberlain's attitude, 
partly also on recent conversations with Sir Hercules 
Robinson. Naturally neither Rhodes nor he informed 
Robinson of their scheme — Rhodes, indeed, as will appear, 
carefully concealed it from him — but they had discussed 
with him the action to be taken in case of a rising in 
Johannesburg. Robinson had told them confidentially of 
his instructions to mediate, and possibly Jameson suggested 
to him that, if he wanted armed support, the police on the 
border might prove useful. But this is a very different thing 
from Robinson approving of the unauthorized invasion of 
the Transvaal that Rhodes and Jameson contemplated. But, 



THE RAID 267 

like Dr. Harris, Jameson seems to have believed that others 
understood his hints in the same sense that he gave them. 
Meanwhile there was more misunderstanding in 
Johannesburg. Arms had been smuggled in, but not in 
sufficient quantities, and the tale of 5000 rifles promised 
had not been nearly completed by the end of December. 
The leaders also required a definite assurance that the 
High Commissioner would come up to protect them, as 
soon as the revolt broke out. Rhodes gave the necessary 
assurance, quite unjustifiably, for his knowledge of 
Robinson's intention came to him only in confidence as 
a Minister of the Crown, and was never meant to be used 
as a stimulus to the revolt. Finally, the question of the 
flag came up again in an acute form. The Reform 
Committee, organizing the revolt, discovered that many 
of the rank and file were very lukewarm about rising at 
all and were certainly not prepared to risk their lives for 
the Union Jack. Accordingly The Times correspondent. 
Colonel Younghusband, who was in the Committee's 
confidence, volunteered to see Rhodes in Cape Town. On 
arriving at Groote Schuur on December 22, 1895, he found 
Rhodes with a large party on his stoep. " Have you seen 
my hydrangeas ? " said Rhodes, catching hold of his arm, 
** come and see them " ; and, as soon as they were out of 
earshot : " Now tell me quick what it is, as we can't stay 
here long ; we are being watched." On hearing Young- 
husband's message : " All right, if they won't go into it, 
they won't ; and I shall wire to Jameson to keep quiet." 
As, however, he was stroUing off to the station for his three 
days' journey back, Younghusband was overtaken by Dr. 
Harris, who said, " Oh, Rhodes says that when any rising 
takes place it must be under the British flag." When this 
message was reported, the Reform leaders were in dismay : 
they sent telegrams and messengers to Jameson to delay 
his departure, and two more delegates to have it out with 
Rhodes. The delegates saw him on December 28, and 
were reassured by his statement that there would be no 
question of the Union Jack — Dr. Harris's message had 
probably been another case of " doing the best he could " ; 
and in the evening it was agreed to postpone all action for 



268 CECIL RHODES 

another ten days, when it was hoped more arms would 
have arrived. Rhodes himself thought the revolution had 
" fizzled out like a damp squib." 

Even before this Rhodes had quite decided that all 
action must be postponed till the Johannesburg people 
were readier. Throughout the 26th, 27th and 28th 
telegrams of increasing urgency were being sent to Jameson 
from the Chartered Company's office, bidding him stand 
fast. Dr. Harris was evidently moved almost to tears by 
the hesitation of Johannesburg, and concludes one of his 
telegrams " Ichabod " ; but he makes it quite plain to 
Jameson that he must not move : " All our foreign friends 
are dead against flotation and say public will not subscribe 
one penny towards it even with you as director. . . . We 
cannot have fiasco." 

But Jameson was tired of delays and of all the excuses 
of Johannesburg for postponement — the flag, the High 
Commissioner, a race meeting or what not — which he began 
to suspect were simply signs of oozing courage ; and he came 
to the conclusion that if left to itself Johannesburg would 
never rise at all. Well, if they hesitated to take the plunge, 
he would drive them in. Moreover, there were signs that 
the secret was leaking out : everybody in Mafeking knew 
that some plot was afoot ; there were rumours in the Free 
State and in Cape Town, and even the old President in 
a speech at Middelburg had hinted that he might be more 
wide awake than was suspected. For all these reasons he 
decided he must act at once if at all : " You may say what 
you like," he is reported to have exclaimed, as he rose from 
reading Macaulay's essay, " but Clive would have done 
it ! " So, in spite of Rhodes's direct and reiterated orders, 
he prepared to "do the best he could as circumstances 
arise." One of the Johannesburg messengers, the silent 
gentleman of the oil-drums, sent to stop him, finding, when 
he arrived at Pitsani on December 28, that his message was 
spoken to deaf ears, decided to cast in his lot with the 
column and go in with it. The other messenger startled the 
inhabitants of Mafeking by thundering at the door of a 
Jewish storekeeper in the early hours of the following morn- 
ing, and after getting a pair of top-boots from the store 



THE RAID 269 

rode on post-haste to Pitsani on the same fruitless mission. 
On this day, Sunday, December 29, Jameson and his officers 
harangued the men, read out snatches of the " letter of 
invitation," which he dated December 20, and exhorted 
them to ride in with every prospect of an easy success. 
Parting healths were drunk, in one case too freely, for the 
trooper sent to cut the wires to Pretoria was so befuddled 
that he carefully cut and buried long strands from a 
farmer's fence in mistake for the telegraph wire. The care- 
less young officers had no doubts or fears ; they had been 
told that " it would be all right " with the Imperial 
authorities, and so easy were they as to the event that one 
of them carried in his kit a complete collection of incrimi- 
nating documents, code-telegrams, a code to interpret 
them, and a diary recording his talks with Rhodes and 
Jameson. At 9.30 p.m. the magistrate of Mafeking was 
sitting peacefully on his stoep after evening service with his 
wife and mother, when the quiet was suddenly broken by 
loud cheering from the police camp hard by. It came 
from the Imperial police, transferred to the Chartered 
Company's service, starting out to join the Rhodesians at 
Pitsani. So sallied forth Jameson's troop of 600 across the 
border into the Transvaal. 

On the morning of that Sunday Rhodes received a tele- 
gram from Jameson saying that he was starting that night. 
Rhodes at once drafted a telegram ordering him on no 
account to move. But the telegraph offices were shut for 
the rest of the day, and by the evening the line to Cape 
Town had been cut by troopers unfortunately more sober 
than their comrade ; so this telegram was never sent off. 
Hitherto Rhodes had confided his plan to only two men in 
the Imperial service. One of these was his Oxford friend, 
F. J. Newton, formerly on the Governor's staff, but now 
Commissioner of the Protectorate, where his acquiescence 
was almost essential to Rhodes's plans. Newton had felt 
some qualms at this knowledge and thought he ought either 
to resign or inform his chief, but Rhodes had quieted his 
scruples, saying it was unnecessary and absurd for him to 
resign and that it might do harm to speak to Robinson 
prematurely. The other was the Imperial Secretary him- 



270 CECIL RHODES 

self, the High Commissioner's right-hand man, Sir Graham 
Bower. In October Rhodes, on obtaining his word of 
honour that he would keep it secret, told him of the force 
he was collecting at Pitsani for action in the Transvaal, 
adding, " If trouble comes, I am not going to sit still. 
You fellows are infernally slow : you can act if you Uke, 
but, if you do not act, I will." Later he told Bower of the 
money he was spending on the Johannesburg rising, but 
at the end of December informed him that the plot had 
miscarried. Great then was his astonishment and distress, 
when he was summoned to Rhodes's house at eleven 
o'clock that Sunday night, and Rhodes showed him Jameson's 
telegram. Rhodes still professed to have a faint hope 
that Jameson might be recalled by his own message ; but 
he was evidently crushed by the news and kept saying, 
" I know I must go ; I will resign to-morrow." 

Naturally Rhodes had said nothing of his designs against 
the Transvaal Government to his ally Hofmeyr, though 
he seems to have thought of giving him a hint when all the 
preparations were completed ; nor did he tell his colleagues 
in the Ministry. He appears to have thought that success 
would justify him in their eyes. Two of his Ministers, 
however, had been disturbed by persistent rumours connect- 
ing his name with the rising in Johannesburg. One of 
them, Schreiner, had gone to see him at Groote Schuur on the 
memorable Sunday and warned him against having anything 
to do with the Johannesburg movement, as people would be 
watching him. " Oh, that's all right," said Rhodes, shrug- 
ging his shoulders : he then still hoped his telegram would 
recall Jameson. On Monday 30th Schreiner had telegrams 
from the magistrate and police inspector at Mafeking, sent 
by despatch rider to the nearest station below the 
interrupted wires, announcing Jameson's departure into 
the Transvaal. Schreiner did not beheve it and told the 
magistrate not to get unduly agitated ; but he went to 
consult Rhodes. He was out riding with a friend, so 
Schreiner left a message and went home to dinner. Hardly 
had he finished when Rhodes's boy came with a lantern to 
guide him through the woods to Groote Schuur. Schreiner 
came into Rhodes's study with the telegrams in his hand : 



THE RAID 271 

'* The moment I saw him," is Schreiner's own account, 
" I saw a man I had never seen before. His appearance 
was utterly dejected and different. Before I could say a 
word, he said, * Yes, yes, it is true. Old Jameson has 
upset my apple-cart. It is all true.' I said I had some 
telegrams. He said, * Never mind, it is all true. Old 
Jameson has upset my apple-cart.' ... I was staggered," 
continues Schreiner ; " I said, * What do you mean, what 
can you mean ? . . . Why did you not say anything to 
me yesterday when I was here ? ' and he said then at once, 
' I thought I had stopped him. I sent messages to stop 
him and did not want to say anything about it if I stopped 
him.' . . . ' Why do you not stop him [now] ? Although 
he has ridden in you can still stop him.* He said, * Poor 
old Jameson. Twenty years we have been friends, and 
now he goes in and ruins me. I cannot hinder him. I 
cannot go in and destroy him.' " Then for three hours 
the two friends talked about this tragic ending to their 
partnership, for both at once saw that Rhodes's Ministry 
was doomed. " During the entire interview," says Schreiner, 
" Mr. Rhodes was really broken down. He was broken down. 
He was not the man who could be playing that part. 
Whatever the reason may have been, when I spoke to 
him he was broken down. . . . He was absolutely broken 
down in spirit, ruined. ... I left in very great distress." 
That one may well believe ; for Schreiner was one of 
Rhodes's most faithful followers. His mother, tied as she 
was to her up-country home, never saw Rhodes, but had 
long watched his career with passionate devotion, used to 
write him letters full of the pride she felt in him, and had 
brought up her son William almost to worship him. In 
parting from this friend on that Monday night Rhodes had 
a foretaste of what the Raid might mean to him. The 
agony had begun, but the worst was yet to come : for 
he still believed that Jameson might perhaps by a miracle 
win through to Johannesburg, and, though he could have 
felt little hope, he yet went on fighting fiercely for his 
friend. 

Early next morning Sir Graham Bower told the High 
Commissioner of Jameson's intention to enter the Transvaal ; 



272 CECIL RHODES 

and on the same day a cable message came from Chamberlain 
saying that rumours of such an intention were current in 
London, and that any such violation of a friendly territory 
must be repudiated forthwith. Rhodes's secret designs, 
confided to The Times and to too many other people in 
London, had evidently leaked out. At any rate, this message 
effectually disposes of the suggestion, afterwards put about, 
that Chamberlain was privy to Rhodes's plot, for it was 
sent before Chamberlain could possibly have known whether 
Jameson had been called in by the Johannesburg people 
or not, and whether he was likely to succeed or fail. Rhodes 
was at once called upon by Robinson to disown Jameson's 
action, but would not do so, and even avoided meeting the 
High Commissioner until he thought that he could do some 
good to Jameson by seeing him. But he sent in his resigna- 
tion as Prime Minister, which Robinson did not accept for 
a few days, as he was just starting for Pretoria to interview 
the President on the crisis. On the 31st all Cape Town knew 
of the Raid, among others Hofmeyr. " If Rhodes is behind 
this, he is no more a friend of mine," he said, and straightway 
telegraphed to Kruger, wishing his burghers success against 
" Jameson's fiUbusters " ; he also called on the High Com- 
missioner to issue a proclamation against the raiders, as 
Kruger had done against the Adendorff trek. Robinson not 
only agreed, but accepted Hofmeyr's draft. Then Rhodes 
was roused to come and plead with Robinson for delay, at 
least until Jameson's fate was known. In Sir Graham 
Bower's room he met Hofmeyr face to face. He told him 
that he had offered to resign and of the reason : "I have 
been so intimately connected with Jameson people will 
not relieve me of responsibility." " Mere resignation is not 
enough," was Hofmeyr's retort ; " you must issue a manifesto 
repudiating Jameson, suspending him as Administrator of 
Rhodesia, and declaring that the law will be set in force 
against him." " Well, you see," answered Rhodes, " Jame- 
son has been such an old friend, of course I cannot do it." 
" I quite understand," said Hofmeyr, " that is quite enough, 
you need say no more." With that he turned away, and 
told a friend a day or two later that he felt about Rhodes's 
conduct as if he had been deceived by the wife of his bosom. 



THE RAID 273 

To Rhodes this loss of a fifteen-year-old friendship was a 
bitter blow : hearing of his deep distress, Hofmeyr consented 
to visit him once more at Groote Schuur. But the breach 
was only widened by this, their last, interview. Rhodes 
went away convinced that Hofmeyr meant to attack his 
Charter, and would make no admission of guilt ; Hofmeyr 
came away saying Rhodes had been spoilt : " He imagines 
himself a young king, the equal of the Almighty," or, as 
another version has it, "a Clive and a Warren Hastings 
rolled into one." Rhodes afterwards would veil his feehngs 
by brutal and cynical allusions to Hofmeyr and their previous 
relationship, but he felt the loss none the less deeply. 

While any hope remained that Jameson might win 
through, Rhodes and his associates did their best to promote 
his success. They could not stop the proclamation outlaw- 
ing him, but hoped through their influence on The Times to 
win the sympathy of England. The " letter of invitation," 
with its date now altered to December 28 by Dr. Harris, 
was cabled over to Printing House Square and, by its 
appeal for helpless women and children, stirred up a wave of 
popular enthusiasm for the Doctor and his troopers, and 
inspired one of the worst sonnets ever indited even by a 
poet-laureate. Dr. Harris kept up the appearance of suc- 
cess as long as he could, and a report was circulated that 
a victory had been won and Johannesburg nearly reached. 
But on January 2 the stunning news came through that on 
that morning Jameson and his whole party had surrendered 
to the Boers at Doornkop, near Krugersdorp, twenty miles 
short of their goal : he had not been assisted by the Johannes- 
burgers, and it began to look as if he was not even wanted 
by them. However, this was the very moment obligingly 
chosen by the German Emperor to divert attention from 
Rhodes's and Jameson's misdeeds by an uncalled-for telegram 
of congratulation to Kruger. The British nation were not 
going to stand any German interference in South Africa, 
and promptly ordered out their fleet as a warning. In 
South Africa even Hofmeyr was stirred to anger at the 
Kaiser's " blundering utterance " : " Nobody," he suggested 
caustically, " knows better than his Imperial Majesty that 
the first German shot against England would be followed 

T 



274 CECIL RHODES 

by . . . the acquisition by England of all German colonies 
— Damaraland included — which would not be an unmixed 
evil for the Cape." Rhodes himself, when he met the Kaiser 
three years later, bluntly described what a good turn he 
had done him : " You see, I was a naughty boy, and you 
tried to whip me. Now my people were quite ready to whip 
me for being a naughty boy, but directly ^ow did it, they said, 
* No, if this is anybody's business, it is ours.' The result 
was that Your Majesty got yourself very much disliked by 
the English people, and I never got whipped at all." 

However, the Kaiser's bluster could not veil the fact that 
Jameson and his men were at the mercy of the Boers, and 
had made themselves ridiculous by their easy self-confidence ; 
that the Johannesburg rising, partly through the blundering 
impatience of Rhodes's own trusted agent, had collapsed 
ignominiously, and that the leaders, among whom was 
Rhodes's own brother, were to be put on trial for their lives 
as traitors to the Republic. The Transvaal was put on its 
guard, and redoubled precautions against a menace to its 
independence. Rhodes had implicated the British South 
Africa Company's officials in his plot and had brought its 
Charter into jeopardy ; he had perverted the De Beers 
Company and the Gold Fields from their legitimate objects, 
and had destroyed a Cabinet which seemed to have no possible 
rivals. Above all, by this attempted short-cut to success, he 
had undone his patient labour of years to unite EngHsh and 
Dutch and to promote the union of South Africa. Before 
the world, and especially before his enemies, he kept a proud, 
almost arrogant, demeanour, barely admitting his error, or 
admitting it only so far as to claim credit for the admission. 
But in his own house, during the week succeeding the Raid, 
he unbared to a few intimates the agony of his soul, an 
agony like that of Saul — 

drear and stark, blind and dumb. 

He had failed not merely in his plot — that touched him least 
— but failed for the time being in the object of union closest 
to his heart, and failed through his most trusted friend ; 
and he had lost the confidence of those through whom he 
had the fondest hopes of achieving his aim. Never after- 



THE RAID 275 

wards was he the leader of the community, but only of a party 
based chiefly on the racial lines which he detested : a few 
good friends still remained to him among the Dutch, but the 
Dutch as a whole had been carried off by Hofmeyr from him 
for ever. Many of the English too. For Mr. Merriman 
represented the feelings of many of his English fellow- 
colonials, as well as of the Dutch at the Cape, who objected 
as strongly as Rhodes himself to Kruger's treatment of the 
Uitlanders. " I was heartily in favour of the Reform move- 
ment," he said, " and it was the Raid that stopped the 
movement. The Raid was not only wrong in its inception, 
but it is the deceit and treachery which accompanied it 
that I object to ; and the Raid has put Mr. Kruger back 
into his old position and rehabilitated him in the civilized 
world. That is the pity of it, and for that we have to thank 
Mr. Rhodes. ... I do say, Mr, Rhodes is unworthy the 
trust of the country." 

Lastly, he had, by this unworthiness, lowered the tone 
of South African politics. In his solitude and sad repining 
he may well have felt what Schreiner, revealing the depth 
of his own loss, expressed in this bitter cry : " You cannot 
trust a man altogether and be absolutely mistaken in your 
trust and remain with regard to the rest of the world 
just as full of trust and confidence as ever : and that is 
what hundreds of people are feeling in South Africa 
to-day ; they have lost their leader. Yes, they have lost 
him absolutely, a leader who cemented around him such 
loyalty and devotion as J do not suppose in the colony any 
man ever had, or is likely soon to have again. . . . [The 
result is that] people do not confide as they did ; they do not 
take a statement that a thing is so as necessarily proving 
that it is so ; it may be so, or it may not be so." 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE NEW BEGINNING 

Rhodes had no David to harp to him during that week of 
agony, to tell him : 

Each deed thou hast done 
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world ; . . . 

. . . each ray of thy will. 
Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill 
Thy whole people, the countless, with ardour, till they too give 

forth 
A like cheer to their sons, who in turn fill the South and the 

North 
With the radiance thy deed was the germ of . . . . 

He had no David to 

. . . Snatch him the mistake, 
Him the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him awake 
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set 
Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new harmony yet 
To be run and continued and ended — who knows ? — or endure ! 

He had no David ; but during those sleepless nights and days 
he found a voice in his own heart to tell it him : and he came 
forth to face the world with the words on his lips : 

" I am just beginning my career.*' 



For the time being he had ceased to count at the Cape, 
except as a suspect, but there was yet much for him to do 
elsewhere. " What does it matter what the people say 
about us, so long as our work goes on ? Hey ? I am sure 
you realize that," he once told a friend : and it was a 

276 



THE NEW BEGINNING 277 

principle he always followed out himself. There was the 
fate of Jameson and the Reform prisoners to be thought of. 
Jameson and his officers were handed over by Kruger to the 
British authorities and, after a trial at bar, were sentenced 
to terms of imprisonment. Rhodes made it his business to 
provide for their legal expenses, and to ensure them every 
comfort it was within his power to give, and he wrote saying 
that he was prepared to stand his trial also, if the Govern- 
ment wished to prosecute. The Reform prisoners were put 
on trial in the Transvaal, and Frank Rhodes and the other 
leaders were sentenced to death. Rhodes encouraged his 
sister to go up and do all she could for Frank while he was 
in prison ; and when the death sentences on Frank and 
the other three were commuted for fines of £25,000 apiece, 
Rhodes cheerfully paid them as part of the expenses of the 
Raid. These expenses, which included the cost of all the 
agents employed in the plot, a press fund to secure a favour- 
able public opinion, compensation to sufferers, arms smuggled 
into Johannesburg, and pay and equipment for the raiders, 
amounted to considerabty over a quarter of a million sterling, 
a debt which was promptly settled by Rhodes and Beit 
between them. He also had it at heart to make a clean 
breast of his own share in the Raid. There was no definite 
charge on which he could be brought to trial, as Jameson 
had been ; but two Committees inquired into the plot against 
the Transvaal. The first, a Committee of the Cape House of 
Assembly, sat in 1896, and, after hearing all the evidence 
available in South Africa, reported that, though Rhodes 
did not direct or approve Jameson's entering the territory 
of the South African Republic, yet he could not be relieved 
of responsibility for the unfortunate occurrences that had 
taken place, as he had concurred in the previous arrange- 
ments. Rhodes himself was not present at this inquiry, 
as he was then engaged in suppressing the rebellion in 
Matabeleland, but he concurred in the verdict. 

The second inquiry was in 1897, before the British South 
Africa Committee of the House of Commons. When he 
started from South Africa to " face the music " — so he called 
it — a considerable revulsion of feeling had already set in. 
Kruger, not for the first time, had had all the cards in his 



<278 CECIL RHODES 

hand after the Raid, and by a display of generosity might 
have brought nearly all South Africa to his feet. But he had 
shown clemency to the Reform prisoners only grudgingly, and 
under pressure of an almost general expression of opinion 
from every other colony and state : and he had not made 
any concessions to the Uitlanders' real grievances. This 
obstinacy, for one thing, had helped to rehabilitate his great 
rival. Rhodes himself also, by his masterly settlement of 
the Matabele trouble, had recalled to men's minds the great 
qualities of their lost leader : absence and his silence to the 
world, while he was " doing his duty," as he said, in Rhodesia, 
did the rest. So, when he came round from Beira on his 
way home to England, his journey was more like a triumphal 
progress than the penitential pilgrimage of a culprit going 
to meet his judges. Invitations to public receptions 
showered upon him from town after town on his way, but 
he refused them all except those from Port EUzabeth and 
Cape Town. At Port Elizabeth he began his speech nobly : 
" If I may put to you a thought, it is that the man who is 
continuously prosperous does not know himself, his own 
mind or character. It is a good thing to have a period of 
adversity. You then find out who are your real friends. . . . 
I am confident enough to say that I do not feel that my 
pubhc career has closed. ... I am determined still to 
strive for the closer union of South Africa. ..." On his 
railway journey to Kimberley and thence to Cape Town 
crowds thronged to the stations to welcome him, and among 
them he was rejoiced to recognize the faces of many of his 
old friends among the Dutch farmers. He was deeply 
touched : " It is very moving to see one's fellow-beings feel 
so kindly to one. Such appreciation as this generally comes 
after a man is dead," he said to Fuller, and at a private 
dinner with some former parliamentary colleagues was 
moved to the frankest expression of his contrition. " I do 
not so much regret," he admitted, " joining in an attempt 
to force President Kruger into a juster and more reasonable 
policy. . . . But what has been a burden to me is that I 
was Prime Minister at the time, and that I had given a 
promise that I would not do anything incompatible with the 
joint position I held as director of the Chartered Company 



THE NEW BEGINNING 279 

and Premier of the Cape Colony. On every ground I was 
bound to resign if I took such a course as assisting in a 
revolution against an officially friendly state ; and I did not. 
I can only say that I will do my best to make atonement 
for my error by untiring devotion to the best interests of 
South Africa." Unhappily he never went so far in public. 
He had promised to make this apology at the public reception 
in Cape Town, but as he was beginning it the apology was 
drowned in a hurricane of applause, and he did not continue. 
It was indeed not a humble Rhodes, and many doubted if 
his repentance was sincere when, in that first public speech 
at Port Elizabeth, he had blurted out his contempt for 
the *' unctuous rectitude " of his countrymen in England, 
before whom he was about to appear.^ 

No such scene greeted him at the inquiry in London as 
that immortalized by Macaulay in his description of the 
trial of Warren Hastings. It is true some of the greatest 
in EngUsh politics were to sit in judgement upon him : 
Chamberlain himself and Hicks-Beach, the jealous watch- 
dog of the Exchequer, . whose rough tongue had no respect 
of persons ; Harcourt, Campbell-Bannerman, and Buxton ; 
Blake, the Irish-Canadian orator; Labouchere, who from 
the outset had pursued an untiring vendetta against Rhodes, 
his Company and all their proceedings ; the Attorney- 
General, Cripps and Bigham, all three learned in the law 
and adroit in cross - examination ; and there, too, primed 
with Rhodes's case by a recent sojourn with him in 
Rhodesia, " the delight and ornament of the House, and 
the charm of every private society he honoured with his 
presence," that modern Charles Townshend, George Wynd- 
ham ; the poet, had he not dallied with politics, the great 
statesman, had he not trifled with Uterature.^ To assist 
the Committee in coming to a just decision were assembled 
many of the great leaders of the Bar : Cohen, mellifluous 

^ An ingenious and cautious friend suggested to him that the words 
he meant to use and which should be inserted in the official report were 
"anxious rectitude." But Rhodes, as might be expected, rephed, "No, 
I said it and I stick to it." 

^ Charles Boyd relates that Rhodes, when he had known him only a 
year, said of him, " Thought he was a spring poet : instead of that he 
is all chapter and verse." 



28o CECIL RHODES 

and most deadly when with exquisite courtesy he seemed to 
be yielding every point ; Pember, harsh and domineering, 
whose rough decision overbore all argument ; and silver- 
tongued Pope, the unquestioned monarch of the Parlia- 
mentary Bar, who in his weighty and measured utterances 
seemed always, with consummate art, to be pleading not 
for a mere client's interests but for truth and public policy. 
All these were there ; yet it was but a drab spectacle. 
The setting was not Rufus's Hall, but a dull committee- 
room adjoining. No beauty, rank or eminence graced the 
proceedings, for all but those connected in some way with 
the case were rigidly excluded. Dramatic moments, indeed, 
there were : Sir Graham Bower's starthng revelation of 
his own privity to the plot and his concealment of it from 
the High Commissioner, some passages in Dr. Harris's 
evidence, where his word and Chamberlain's seemed almost 
irreconcilable, and Hawkesley's refusal to produce telegrams 
in his possession ; but there was no eager crowd, swayed 
by divergent feelings, to share in and murmur at the 
exciting moments. 

The two chief points of interest at the Committee were 
Rhodes himself and the question of Chamberlain's fore- 
knowledge of the plot. Rhodes took the inquiry very 
seriously, and on his voyage to England spent two hours 
every day on ship-board rehearsing his evidence with a 
friend : the friend had to ask the sort of questions he 
imagined Labouchere or Harcourt would put. " Yes, that 
is a very fair question," Rhodes would say, and carefully 
consider how he would answer it. In spite of all this 
preparation he was evidently nervous when he really found 
himself walking up to the little table placed in the centre 
of the horse-shoe round which the Committee were sitting. 
He came in looking, as to features, very much like a Roman 
Emperor — massive head, masterful nose, and sleepy eyes, 
yet with a veiled fire in them — but in gait and gesture 
very unlike any Roman Emperor : ill - fitting clothes 
huddled on to an awkward body, a rather shambling walk 
and a half -dazed appearance. The first unfavourable 
impression was confirmed when he began to speak. His 
voice was squeaky and staccato, he sat humped up in his 



THE NEW BEGINNING 281 

chair and was obviously ill at ease before his inquisitors. 
The answers he gave seemed involved and sometimes off 
the point. One began to wonder if this were really the 
great Colossus who bestrode half a continent. He seemed 
heavy, even stupid. Then came the hour for luncheon, 
which, with characteristic disregard of ceremony, the 
Committee and witnesses ate off little trays brought in by 
a waiter, so that the proceedings were not interrupted. 
Rhodes murmured his order to the waiter and then went 
on as before. The luncheons were brought in ; and before 
Rhodes was set a solitary sandwich and a large tankard of 
stout. One bite of the sandwich, one long draught from 
the tankard ; and then, as if suddenly aroused by this 
diversion, he shook himself together, like a lion just awaking, 
pulled straight his coat, sat up square to his tormentors, 
sent forth a gleam from that hitherto sleepy eye, and then — 
he just took that Committee in hand. Hitherto they had 
seemed to play with him, henceforward the rdles were 
reversed. There was no longer any question of examining 
Rhodes on his misdeeds ; Rhodes himself took the floor 
and began examining the Committee on their knowledge 
of South Africa and lecturing them on things he thought 
it good for their souls to know. He enjoyed himself 
vastly. He dragged them away from the Raid, not because 
he wished to conceal his own part in the business — he stated 
quite frankly at the outset that he accepted full responsi- 
bihty for it — but he brushed it aside as irrelevant, because 
he wanted to make that Committee, and through them the 
British pubUc, understand their own mistakes and responsi- 
bility in South Africa and the pohcy for which he stood. 
Germany's part in Transvaal affairs ? Oh, Germany's 
susceptibilities must be considered, and we must observe 
the correct diplomatic reticence, was the attitude of most 
of the Committee. Diplomacy go hang, said Rhodes in 
effect ; you've got to know what I beUeve to be the facts : 
and these facts he proceeded to tell them. He had five days 
in that witness chair ; but once he was on his mettle he 
never let that Committee go. Unmoved alike by Sir 
William Harcourt's grand manner and by Labouchere's 
insidious thrusts, he answered their questions indeed, but 



282 CECIL RHODES 

often told them more than they bargained for. He was 
accused of having made money by selling shares at the 
time of the Raid, so Wyndham asked him a friendly ques- 
tion about his transactions. Yes, I've sold plenty of shares, 
cheerfully responded the culprit ; when the work on the 
telegraph or railway Unes was hung up for lack of funds, 
I would sell large blocks of shares to enable me to pay for 
them out of my own pocket ; I did likewise at the time of 
the Matabele War, " when I was afraid the Doctor might 
have bad times." But nobody had the courage to ask 
him the specific question about the Raid time : it would 
have been too absurd, for any one who had seen and heard 
him, to suspect him of having tried to make money out of 
that adventure. After his five days under examination 
the Committee seemed only too glad to let him go. Would 
you like to have me up again ? blandly inquired Rhodes ; 
I shall be happy to come, but you must remember that 
my work in Rhodesia keeps me very busy. Later, perhaps, 
said the Committee ; but " later " never came. 

As to Chamberlain's supposed privity with the plot 
against the Transvaal, nothing came out that has not been 
recounted in the previous chapter. The only unsatisfactory 
incident of the inquiry was that Hawkesley, on Rhodes's 
orders, refused to produce some documents, presumably 
telegrams and letters sent by Rhodes's agents to South 
Africa, which he had shown privately to Chamberlain the 
previous year ; nor did the Committee insist on their 
production. This was unfortunate, because there was a 
suspicion abroad, partly fostered by Rhodes's friends, that 
Chamberlain was, in the current phrase, "in it up to the 
neck " ; and the belief is even yet not quite dead that, after 
secretly countenancing the conspirators' plans, he threw 
them over when the fiasco came. Complete mathematical 
proof of Chamberlain's innocence is, of course, not possible, 
since these communications have never been revealed ; 
and by this time probably all copies have been destroyed. 
Rhodes himself certainly believed that he was serving his 
country's interest in forbidding their production ; but it 
is significant that all the cables in code which passed between 
agents in London and Rhodes himself or the Company's 



THE NEW BEGINNING 283 

officials at the Cape were duly produced, and that the 
utmost they go to prove is that some of these agents believed 
that Chamberlain had an inkling of Rhodes's plans. ^ If 
the banned documents went any further, the most probable 
solution of the mystery is that Chamberlain may, in some 
utterance to Rhodes or his friends, have expressed a hope 
that the expected rising in Johannesburg would succeed, or 
have alluded to the instructions given to Robinson as to his 
course of action in the event of a rising. If that was so, 
Rhodes may have thought it prudent to avoid the dis- 
closure of such utterances at a time when the rising had 
failed and the best hope of securing appeasement in South 
Africa was by concealing from Kruger what might have 
happened in other circumstances : and Chamberlain, though 
he said he had no objection to their disclosure, may for the 
same reason not have regretted Rhodes's decision. But 
though mathematical proof is impossible, it may confidently 
be asserted that, whatever sympathy Chamberlain may have 
had with the rising, he was not privy to, still less approved 
of, Rhodes's machinations in connection with it.^ 

The verdict of this Committee was very much the same 
as that of the Cape inquiry. The Raid was condemned, 
and Rhodes was severely censured for the misuse of his 
office as Prime Minister of the Cape and managing director 
of the Chartered Company ; that was the least which the 
national honour demanded, especially in view of assertions, 
such as Jameson's, " I know, if I had succeeded, I should 
have been forgiven," and Rhodes's " unctuous rectitude." 
It must be admitted, however, that the sting of the 
rebuke to Rhodes was very much taken out by the sub- 
sequent debate in the House of Commons. Courtney, 
that jealous keeper of the nation's conscience, and other 

^ Some documents purporting to be the suppressed communications 
were published subsequently in the Ind&pendance Beige and are quoted 
in Jeyes's Life of Chamberlain. But they carry us no further. 

* The view expressed in the foregoing paragraph is borne out by a 
statement attributed to George Wyndham by Mr. Blunt {My Diaries, i. 
p. 346). Wyndham, who was in all the secrets of the Rhodes group, told 
Blunt that Chamberlain was not involved in the Raid but was concerned 
in political intrigue against the Transvaal, which would obviously refer 
to the instructions to Robinson to use an armed force, if necessary, in 
case of a rising in Johannesburg. 



284 CECIL RHODES 

speakers made a strong plea for removing his name from 
the list of Privy Councillors, as a mark of the nation's 
disapprobation of his action ; but the House would not 
listen to the suggestion. They were not perhaps much 
moved by Chamberlain's paradoxical assertion that Rhodes 
had done nothing inconsistent with his personal honour ; 
an assertion which went far beyond what Rhodes himself 
admitted to his friends at Cape Town. But it was felt that 
he had been punished enough in losing his great position 
at the Cape as well as his seat on the Board of the Company 
he had himself created. They were also impressed by a 
generous tribute to him from his successor and former rival, 
Sprigg, who testified to the love and admiration in which 
he was still held at the Cape and to the strong feehng there 
that any further punishment meted out to him would appear 
merely vindictive. 

Rhodes himself was undoubtedly enough punished, not 
merely in loss of position and power, but still more in the 
disappointment of hopes. Nevertheless the Committee, and 
still more the debate in the House, were, from a national 
point of view, deplorable. A treacherous and, in method, 
unjustifiable attack had been made on the Transvaal 
Republic, and, whatever the provocation, admittedly great, 
in the treatment of the Uitlanders, it would have been more 
in keeping with our honour frankly to have admitted the 
wrong done by our fellow-citizens and leave the excuses 
aside. The Committee, however, allowed itself to be 
diverted by long discussions as to the Uitlanders' grievances, 
the Transvaal's intrigues with Germany and such really 
irrelevant matters. For, however just ours and the Uit- 
landers' case may have been against Kruger's regime, our 
countrymen had put themselves irretrievably in the wrong by 
the Raid, as well as by the plottings and smuggling of arms 
which preceded it. The Committee's inabihty to obtain docu- 
ments known to be in the possession of one of the witnesses 
was another unfortunate incident ; and Rhodes rendered 
a poor service to his country by forbidding their production. 
For whatever they may have contained, nothing could have 
been more mischievous than the atmosphere of suspicion 
created by their non-production. And the subsequent debate 



THE NEW BEGINNING 285 

in the House was worst of all, with Chamberlain's almost 
implicit disassociation from the condemnation of Rhodes by 
the Committee. The fact is that in many quarters in England 
there was Uttle condemnation of the Raid. Rhodes was 
aware of this when he said, " I found all the busmen 
smiling at me when I came to London ; so I knew it was 
all right." 

II 

Even before this final examination by his countrymen 
Rhodes had found work of the utmost importance to his 
hand. His first great fear, after the catastrophe, had been 
that his beloved Company might be deprived of its Charter, 
and that he himself would be allowed to have no further 
part in Rhodesia. Hardly had he come out of his retire- 
ment at Groote Schuur in January 1896 than he took ship 
to England for a week's visit to see his Board and Chamber- 
lain. He found out from the latter that there was no 
immediate design of cancelling the Charter ; and satisfied 
with this assurance, when he saw that his own continued 
presence on the Board might injure the Company, he made 
no difficulty about resigning his directorship.^ But, director 
or no director, he was determined now to devote his energies 
chiefly to his own country. Returning by the East coast 
route, he called on Kitchener in Egypt on the way and 
obtained through him a cargo of Soudanese donkeys for 
use in Rhodesia, because of their immunity from horse- 
sickness. ^ He landed at Beira on March 20, 1896, and a few 
days later heard news so serious that he thought no more 
for some time of donkeys or horse-sickness. On March 24 
the first murders of isolated settlers near Buluwayo were 
perpetrated by the Matabeles, the signal for the serious 

^ This resignation did not take effect till June, when Chamberlain 
had pointed out its necessity. 

2 Mr. Blunt in his Diaries reports a cock-and-bull story to the effect 
that Rhodes and Kitchener between them plotted that Rhodes should be 
allowed to kidnap 200 Soudanese men to work in the Rhodesian mines. 
Rhodes at the time heard of the story, and in a speech at Buluwayo 
promptly contradicted it : "I had hardly arranged for these donkeys to 
arrive here when I received a peremptory telegram asking if it was correct 
that I was arranging for the importation of Soudanese. I replied 
promptly, gentlemen, that it was totally incorrect, and that the only 
animals I was receiving or arranging for were donkeys." 



286 CECIL RHODES 

rising, which for a time jeopardized the lives of the whole 
white community in Matabeleland. The Matabeles had 
many grievances real and imaginary against the English. 
Since Jameson's arrival in 1893 there had been a drought 
of unexampled severity ; the native police enrolled by the 
Company, taken chiefly from the races formerly subject 
to the Matabeles, had shown a tactless and tyrannical 
disposition, much resented by their former masters, and 
had even sometimes been employed in securing forced 
labour for the mines ; the reserves set aside for the natives 
after .the Matabele War had been most unsatisfactory ; 
" not homes, but cemeteries," they were described by a 
distinguished Englishman. To crown all, one of the most 
fatal attacks of rinderpest ever known in South Africa 
spread havoc and destruction among the magnificent herds 
which had been the glory and chief source of livelihood to 
Lo Bengula and his people. To Lo Bengula's old warriors 
the opportunity seemed good for revenging themselves on 
the invaders : some of their best regiments had taken no 
part in the fighting of 1893 and felt themselves a match 
for the English, whose prestige had suffered by Jameson's 
defeat at Doornkop ; moreover, the country had been largely 
denuded of pohce by their diversion to the Raid. The 
revolt spread like wildfire, and very soon the 4000 inhabit- 
ants of Buluwayo found themselves a beleaguered garrison 
surrounded by 15,000 savages and in danger of starvation, 
if not worse. 

Fortunately help was at hand. Earl Grey had gallantly 
undertaken the thankless task of succeeding Jameson as 
Administrator. Arriving at Maf eking within a month of 
the outbreak of revolt, he hurried stores up to Buluwayo. 
Already Colonel Plumer, now for the first time enabled to 
give proof of his great miUtary capacity, had organized a 
relief column, which on May 24 inflicted the first defeat 
on the rebel forces and removed all danger from Buluwayo. 
Relief had also been coming from another quarter. Rhodes 
had arrived at SaUsbury at the end of March and had at 
once, though ill of malaria, begun organizing a column 
under Colonel Beal, and in spite of his condition insisted 
on accompanying it. During the march to Buluwayo 



THE NEW BEGINNING 287 

Beal defeated the rebels near Gwelo, and Rhodes took his 
full share of all risks in this engagement and in the still 
more dangerous reconnoitring expeditions. He seemed to 
bear a charmed life, never carrying any weapon except a 
hunting-crop and always riding ahead with fearless courage. 
He was apparently not a man of much physical courage 
naturally, but he had the greater moral courage of being 
able to force himself to incur necessary dangers at a crisis ; 
and he now probably felt that his own skin was of little 
worth compared with the example he felt bound to give. 
When his column arrived at Buluwayo in the beginning of 
June the Matabele impis had all dispersed into the Matoppo 
Hills, a large tract of tumbled country to the south-east 
of Buluwayo. Sir Frederick Carrington had arrived to 
take command of the operations and ordered a sweep round 
of this country by three columns. Plumer won a consider- 
able success at Thabas Imamba, north of the Matoppos, 
at the end of the month, but another attack in July showed 
that the rebels would never be defeated by this sort of 
warfare. When pressed they could always take refuge in 
the almost inaccessible hills at their back, and from their 
posts of vantage could sally forth and inflict serious losses 
on the attackers. They could indeed be starved out ; 
but Rhodes wanted peace not extermination. The only 
other course was negotiation, and this Rhodes resolved to 
undertake. 

Negotiation was not an easy task. Carrington insisted 
on keeping a large force o'n the edge of the Matoppos, which 
naturally aroused the suspicions of the Matabeles that a 
trap was being laid for them ; and Rhodes's first difficulty 
was to get into communication with them at all. However, 
an opportunity was found by the capture in August of an 
old old crone, a widow of Lo Bengula's father, Moselikatze, 
who was released with a message to the rebels. Four days 
later a small party rode out of Plumer's camp, Rhodes 
himself, Hans Sauer, Colenbrander, a man well versed in 
the natives' ways, who had quarrelled with the Chartered 
Company but came in response to Rhodes's special request, 
one or two other Europeans and the native scouts John 
Grootboom and Makunga. The party were unarmed and 



288 CECIL RHODES 

they rode out to the trysting-place, where a red flag was 
to be flying if the Matabele indunas were prepared to parley. 
The red flag was flying right enough, and to show that it 
was understood Rhodes hung beneath it his own white 
handkerchief. Further messages were sent in to the chiefs 
to induce them to come to an indaba with Rhodes to discuss 
grievances and consider terms of peace ; but they were still 
very wary of approaching close to the English camp. So, 
to give them confidence, Rhodes with his little party moved 
right away from the troops and pitched a camp far in the 
heart of the Matoppos ; there he remained, forbidding any 
armed force from Plumer's camp to come near him, defence- 
less, had the Matabeles any sinister intentions. All the time 
he was being watched by the Matabeles in the hills above 
him ; and at last, seeing that he had no aggressive intentions, 
they gradually gained confidence enough to consent to a 
meeting, on the understanding that neither side should 
bring rifles or assegais. This first indaba on August 21 
was the crucial one. Rhodes and his party were first at 
the meeting-place, a large smooth rock ; they carried 
among them only four revolvers and their horses were 
tethered some way behind them, so that there was no means 
of escape in case of treachery. Soon at least 100 natives 
were seen approaching, all fully armed with assegais and 
rifles, and flanking parties thrown out to cut off any retreat. 
In spite of the previous arrangement and several messages 
the natives kept advancing with threatening mien. These 
were anxious moments for Rhodes and his friends. A 
sign of fear or hesitation would certainly have brought the 
whole crowd upon them. Not before they were forty yards 
from the rock did the natives lay down their arms. Then 
the talk went on between them and Rhodes for two livelong 
hours, Colenbrander acting as interpreter. At first the 
young men were inclined to be unruly and interrupt their 
elders, who were doing most of the talking, but were soon 
brought to order by the wise old induna Babyan. The 
following fragment of conversation shows the nature of the 
discussions that went on during those two hours : " Rhodes, 
we know," said a chief, " he is not in fault." Then a 
Majaka said insolently, " How do we know that Mr. Rhodes 



THE NEW BEGINNING 289 

is doing his best for us ? Perhaps when he goes away he 
tells his people to rob us." To this the chiefs answered that 
they trusted Colenbrander and Rhodes ; whereupon, " Tell 
them, Colenbrander, that I am going to stay in the country," 
said Rhodes. After this he scattered bagfuls of tobacco 
to be scrambled for by the natives, and the indaba broke 
up. On returning to camp Rhodes remarked that the 
interview had just enough spice of danger to make it 
interesting. 

After this, for nearly two months, Rhodes stayed on at 
his camp, holding frequent indabas with the natives, urging 
them to come in before it was too late to sow their crops 
and avert starvation, and allowing them to go freely in 
and out of the camp as they pleased ; so gradually they 
came to look upon him as their Father and Protector. 
Such implicit faith, too, had his friend Lord Grey, the 
Administrator, in Rhodes and his trustful methods that he 
allowed Lady Grey and his daughter to stay a fortnight in 
the camp with no more protection from the natives surround- 
ing them than Rhodes had himself. 

The last solemn conference, held on October 13, was 
attended by Lord Grey, Rhodes, with Colenbrander to 
interpret, and nineteen of the chiefs. Grey opened the 
proceedings by telling them the Queen wished for peace 
before they were starved. It would be useless for them 
to resist the English, who were very strong with their rail- 
way, then being brought up to Buluwayo by Sir Charles 
Metcalfe, their forts and their guns. *' I hear," he added, 
*' that you chiefs are sore because you have lost authority 
and the young men laugh at you. Well, I will give authority 
to good indunas, and first to Faku and Umjeen, to whom I 
will give a horse and in due time a salary." Then the 
following dialogue took place : 

Gamho. We have no leader and it is impossible for a 
nation to live without a ruler. 

Rhodes. The chiefs will be at the head of their followers, 
but the Administrator will be over them. 

Somahulana. We want some one to whom we can go 
before we go to Mr. Rhodes, to whom we can report our 
troubles. We want one not half a dozen heads. 

u 



290 CECIL RHODES 

Rhodes. Each chief will have his own district and the 
people will go with their grievances to the chiefs. The 
chief will go to the native commissioners, who will in turn 
communicate with the Administrator. 

Faku. That is what we want. Give us a head and we 
are satisfied. 

Rhodes. The trouble is that the chiefs and indunas 
have nothing, and they will be compelled to beg food 
from the common people. It is not right that chiefs should 
do this, but if they draw salaries from the Government 
this will be avoided. They can then stay in their districts 
and thus look after their people. The chiefs must show 
by their conduct that they are loyal. Look at Dhlio, he is 
not here to-day, because he is in the hills collecting guns. 

And then, after further talk from Grey, Rhodes thus 
concluded : " Before this meeting breaks up I wish to 
inform you that I am leaving the Matoppos to-day, but 
before you go away to your homes I should be pleased to 
give you some presents. I hope you will behave well to 
the Administrator and show your loyalty." 

The chiefs then thanked Rhodes and said they would 
lick the ground he was treading on. 

Having made peace with the indunas, Rhodes gave 
them a prompt illustration of the spirit in which he meant 
to deal with them hereafter. Up in the Matoppos the 
Matabeles had been almost starving, and even now were 
faced with many months of famine, since they had not 
been able to sow their lands. To relieve their immediate 
distress, therefore, he ordered a million bags of mealies at 
once, telling Grey that if the Company objected to the 
expense he would pay the whole cost out of his own pocket. 
He also promised the settlers compensation for their losses : 
and the Company cheerfully accepted both charges. 

The settlement thus achieved by Rhodes after these 
long weeks of suspense and danger was never broken. 
He had succeeded by his confidence and courage, by his 
sympathetic understanding of the workings of the native 
mind, and above all by his ability to recapture that lost 
quaUty of patience which had characterized the old Rhodes 



THE NEW BEGINNING 291 

of the breakfast with Groot Adriaan De la Rey, of the 
night-long vigil with Barney Barnato at Kimberley, or of 
the happy relations with the Dutch, when he could " sit 
down and argue with a man.'* It was one of the great 
incidents of his life, the most complete single achievement, 
and the one which gave him, perhaps, the most unalloyed 
satisfaction. 

Unfortunately the trouble in Rhodesia did not come to 
an end with this settlement. Hardly had Rhodes, with 
most of the available fighting men in Mashonaland, arrived 
to relieve Buluwayo than another serious revolt broke out 
in the country they had just left. The Mashonas had 
always been regarded as an unwarhke people Uttle likely 
to take up arms, but they were stimulated to revolt by 
the prophecies of a venerated seer, who Uved in a cave, 
as well as by the example of their former masters, the 
Matabeles. Their revolt was much more troublesome to 
queU than the other, as they had no such corporate 
existence, each of the many chieftains with his kraal being 
a law unto himself : so each had to be defeated separately. 
The revolt accordingly dragged on from June 1896 to 
October 1897, the natives taking refuge in the innumerable 
caves of the country, whence they made raids on the 
English : and the method sometimes adopted of dealing with 
them was to blow up their fastnesses with dynamite. During 
part of this guerilla warfare Rhodes had to be away giving 
evidence before the Committee in London, but as soon as 
he was released he hurried back to his country. It must 
be remembered that all this time Rhodes had no official 
position of any kind there : for he was no longer a director 
and had no more status than any other settler. But Rhodes 
was Rhodes, and, wherever he was, could no more be ignored 
than the sun or the weather. He once made himself colonel 
of a column to bring to an end the disputes between two 
officers of equal rank ; he told generals and others in 
the Imperial service when he thought their work was done, 
and saw that they took the hint for their departure ; and 
everybody, high or low, looked to him for help and counsel. 
While the guerilla war was still going on he did not neglect 
the material development of the country. He set himself 



292 CECIL RHODES 

the task of importing cattle from the Cape, from the Argen- 
tine and from Australia, to make good the terrible ravages 
of the rinderpest ; finding that the Beira-SaHsbury railway 
could not be laid to the existing site of Umtali except at a 
prohibitive cost, he boldly moved the whole township ten 
miles farther east with full compensation to the stand- 
holders ; the insurgent Mashonas had destroyed a large 
section of his Trans-African telegraph line, but undismayed 
he started laying it again at once. Where this pet project 
was concerned he was ruthless in husthng on his agents to 
almost superhuman exertions. When one of them grumbles 
at difficulties, he replies, " I cannot understand people 
undertaking a job and then not finishing it. ... I am 
determined to finish the telegraph this year to Blantyre " ; 
and though, owing to the destruction of the line, this was 
not accompUshed till April in the following year, 1898, he 
was justifiably proud of the speed with which the line 
had been laid through some hundreds of miles of almost 
unexplored territory. 

All this work he loved. He felt he was doing some- 
thing definitely useful for his fellows : he was, as he called 
it, " creating." Speaking to his Rhodesians almost for the 
last time, he expressed some of his joy in this " creating." 
"To be in this country," he said, " is surely a happier 
thing than the deadly monotony of an English country 
town or the still deadlier monotony of a Karroo village. 
Here at any rate you have your share in the creation of a 
new country. . . . You have the proud satisfaction of 
knowing that you are civilizing a new part of the world. 
Those who fall in that creation fall sooner than they would 
in ordinary life, but their Uves are better and grander." 
He loved, too, the roaming hfe on the open veld, which 
this work of supervising the development of his country 
entailed. There he was most at home, there most himself. 
He was fortunate in having with him then in Rhodesia the 
friend most suited to his mood, Lord Grey, gallant and 
courageous as himself and of a sunnier nature. Grey had 
many stories of his talks with his friend as they rode together 
over the plains or sat beside the camp-fire, stories which 
reveal softer sides of the man's nature rarely shown to 



THE NEW BEGINNING 293 

others. ** Why," asked Grey of him one day, " do you 
always give away cheques of £20, £30, £50 or more to 
every ne'er - do - weel who whines to you for help ? " 
" Well," said Rhodes, " a man once came to me in Cape 
Town and said he was on his beam-ends, could I lend him 
something ? I didn't hke the fellow's face and refused, 
and that same night he committed suicide. That was a 
lesson to me ; and since then I have never dared to refuse 
money to folks who are hard up." One night Grey was 
sleeping soundly in his tent after a hard day's ride when 
suddenly he awoke with a start to find Rhodes, clad only 
in a flannel shirt, leaning over him and shaking him : 
*' Wake up, Grey, wake up ! " " Eh, what's the matter ? 
Is the tent on fire ? " sleepily murmured Grey. " No, no, 
but I just wanted to ask you, have you ever thought how 
lucky you are to have been born an EngHshman when 
there are so many millions who were not born Englishmen ? 
And that's not all : there you are, over forty, with a clean 
and healthy body and a sound mind when you might have 
been riddled with disease. That's all : that's all I wanted 
to say." " The dear old fellow," said Grey to himself, 
" he had been thinking of the Raid and was trying to do 
a bit of his * looking at the comparative.' " Then there 
is the well-known story of Grey breaking to him the news 
of the burning of Groote Schuur. " I've bad news for you," 
said Grey, with a telegram in his hand. " Tell it me quick, 
then," said Rhodes, " so that I may know the worst " ; and 
when he had heard, " Nothing worse than that ? That's 
all right. Why, I thought you were going to say it was the 
Doctor." 

Ill 

At first he took little part in Cape poHtics. In 1896 
he did not appear at all in the House, in spite of an urgent 
appeal from some of his truest friends to make at least 
one speech in extenuation of his fault, by reminding the 
House of all he had done for the colony as Prime Minister. 
But in refusing he was probably wiser than they, for his 
work in Rhodesia was the best acknowledgement of repent- 
ance he could offer. But on his return from England next 



294 CECIL RHODES 

year he was in his place for a few weeks and made a couple 
of speeches on indifferent matters. The House maintained 
its reputation for courtesy, for nobody attacked him or 
made any allusion to the past ; while some of his old 
Dutch friends, who used to call him affectionately " De 
Oud Kerel," said after hearing him : " There spoke our old 
Rhodes. It is the first time we have heard him since the 
Raid." At the end of that year he began to take a more 
active interest again in Cape politics. He was stung by the 
suggestions made by some of his old friends that his best 
retreat was " a hermit's cell somewhere on the Zambesi " ; 
" but," he added, " I have not the slightest intention of 
being driven out." He was especially taken up then and 
during the succeeding year in the elections, in which the 
Progressives, the party newly formed to resist the Bond, 
made their first appearance. In consequence of the Raid 
the Bond had gained a great many new adherents, such as 
Sauer, Merriman and Schreiner, who was appointed by 
Hofmeyr its leader in the House. The old race-antagonism 
was reviving, and the coolness towards Kruger had quite 
disappeared. The principal tenets of the Progressives were 
anti-Krugerism, redistribution, to remove the unfair ad- 
vantage of the country districts over the towns, and the 
union of South Africa : a programme inspired by Rhodes. 

On both sides great activity was displayed at these 
elections of 1898 and much money spent. The Bond 
were accused of drawing funds from the secret service 
chest of the Transvaal, and Rhodes himself spent lavishly 
on the election, an expenditure which he frankly admitted 
and defended when charged with it. He stood himself for 
two constituencies : Namaqualand, a safe seat for his party, 
and his old seat, Barkly West, where the large Dutch 
element made it rather doubtful if he would succeed. But 
he himself was determined to get elected at Barkly West for 
that very reason. " It may be asked," he told his electors 
there, " why do I worry or bother with this constituency ? 
My answer is that I wish to show that, whatever may have 
been my mistakes, I still keep the strong support of a large 
section of the Dutch people, that I have a broad idea as to 
the union of Africa, and that I have not altered my ideas 



THE NEW BEGINNING 295 

in the least about the equality of the races, and that I am 
prepared to meet Dutch audiences equally with English. 
... I want to show that I still have a large section of the 
Dutch electors in my favour." He travelled all over the 
constituency, meeting the Dutch farmers, regretting that 
he had not been born in the country, so that he could talk 
to them in Dutch, and expounding his views in every village. 
He also made speeches for the party at Cape Town and Port 
Ehzabeth, and was consulted on every electoral difficulty 
that arose. A suggestion was made that the Doctor should 
stand ; and Rhodes, whose tender devotion to him after 
he had " upset his apple-cart '* is one of the finest traits in 
his character, was all for it. But most of his friends wisely 
decided that the time had not yet come ; and Jameson 
postponed to a later date the rehabilitation he so splendidly 
achieved. Had not Rhodes felt, as he surely did now, 
that his own days were numbered, it would in some ways 
have been better for his fair fame could he also have waited. 
For in the heat of the election he said many hard and bitter 
things of old allies and friends, parted from him solely on 
account of his own misdeeds, things that one would willingly 
forget. But Rhodes's theory was, " What is the good of 
friends to me when I am right ? I want them when I 
am wrong " ; and to those who had left him at such a time 
he was brutal and unforgiving. However, he achieved two 
objects by his campaign. Though his party were defeated 
in the country, his own triumphant return for his old 
constituency, Barkly West, proved that he was right in 
believing that many of his former friends among the Dutch 
still remained faithful to him personally. ^He also made 
men talk and think of his dream, a united South Africa. 

Speaking of union Rhodes would always adopt a severely 
practical line of argument. He would begin by pointing 
out to his audiences, mostly composed of farmers, the 
intolerable burdens they suffered from excise laws, from 
customs barriers at every state frontier, from the irritating 
tariffs of rival state railways, matters they could all under- 
stand. Then he would lead them on, with some such 
remark as, " After all, the general questions of South Africa 
and the parish pump are wonderfully intermingled," to 



296 CECIL RHODES 

consider that a federal union under which all these material 
squabbles would disappear would also be the best means 
of aboHshing the perennial sore of racial strife. One of the 
suggestions he made was that, if the RepubUcs hung back 
at first, Rhodesia and the two colonies should form a federa- 
tion into which the others would soon be bound to come. 
To this he was reduced largely owing to his own plottings 
and the Raid ; for Kruger had hardened his heart the more 
in consequence, and the Cape Dutch, who alone could have 
brought in the Transvaal, were estranged. Perhaps the 
most important disciples he made were in Natal, a colony 
hitherto inclined to stand aloof from the rest of South 
Africa. Escombe, it will be remembered, was already a 
convert to his views on union, and with time he became 
more enthusiastic. He writes to Rhodes in 1898 that he 
has sent a letter to Laurier in Canada asking for suggestions 
and is digesting other federal constitutions : he even pro- 
poses a motion in the Natal Parliament in favour of union. 
In the following year he had actually made a draft 
constitution for the " South African Commonwealth " 
based on Australian Acts, on the lines Rhodes had always 
laid down : the Governor-General to fly the flag of the 
United Kingdom, and each colony, state or province to 
maintain its own flag and, subject to the constitution, its 
own laws. But the most remarkable symptom of the 
growing feeling for South African solidarity in Natal was 
the invitation given to Rhodes in the last year of his Ufa 
to sit for Newcastle as their representative on the Legislative 
Council. 

All these signs may well haye cheered Rhodes, but he 
was not destined to enter into the promised land. Plans 
and hopes of union were all brought to naught by the 
outbreak of the South African War. The antagonisms of 
race he had laboured so long to allay were started into 
fresh malevolent growth. Escombe, too, his strongest 
supporter, died prematurely. But even at this dark time, 
burdened himself and fevered with impatience by his own 
faiUng vigour, Rhodes never despaired. And, indeed, his 
ideas did not die. When he himself was dead and men 
had forgotten his faults, remembering only what South 



THE NEW BEGINNING 297 

Africa owed him, their thoughts turned more and more 
to the solution of their chief difficulties that he had 
preached to them in and out of season. When the Union 
Convention met, many of its members said to themselves, 
as Jameson did and as his master Rhodes would have said : 
*' We must give up many small things if we are to attain 
the bigger thing, Union ; for that cannot be attained 
without sacrificing many of our personal predilections.'* 
So when the first great difficulty appeared, the language 
question, it was Jameson who proposed that the EngHsh 
and Dutch languages should be on an absolutely equal 
footing : while his great fight was on equal voting powers 
for aU : in both respects following out Rhodes's maxim, 
** Race feehng will go on until equal rights are given." So 
on the native question, which Rhodes had foreseen would 
be one of the great stumbHng-blocks, the Cape consented, 
without giving up her own Uberal franchise, to the 
compromise by which the other provinces retained their 
more stringent law. And so was fulfilled the aspiration 
in one of Rhodes's most combative election speeches. 
" We must forget the past," he said, addressing the 
Afrikanders, " we must forget the past, and work with 
you again in the future, for we are convinced that our 
main objects — the gradual acquisition of Africa and the 
union of South Africa — are one and the same." 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE ST. martin's SUMMER 

The four years in Rhodes's life succeeding the Raid are, 
as an example of his grit and dogged determination in 
overcoming difficulties, the most marvellous even in his 
meteoric career. He knew himself to be under sentence of 
death, he was still reeling from a blow which would have 
crushed many of the strongest, and he had every inducement 
that wealth and friendship could give to pass the remainder 
of his days in peace and comfort. But peace and comfort 
did not enter into his scheme of life, and never less so than 
when he felt that his days were numbered and that he had 
a fault to retrieve. He dropped none of his old interests, 
but took up new ones with zest and seemed to bring to 
them all the old energy and directing capacity. Certainly 
his fellow-shareholders in his great commercial concerns, 
De Beers and the Gold Fields, could not complain of any 
neglect on his part. In the midst of the excitement caused 
by his journey to London to " face the music," he found time 
to preside at the De Beers General Meeting at Kimberley and 
give the shareholders a lucid and most encouraging account 
of their concerns. For this Company he was always thinking 
out fresh plans of economizing in the workings and in- 
creasing its usefulness to the community. He took very 
seriously his trust to dispose of the surplus profits for 
public objects, such as grants for educational purposes, a 
sanatorium for Kimberley, which, he said, " I have always 
thought would be an admirable place for people with chest 
complaints from home," volunteer corps and a local 
exhibition. He also took the chief part in establishing a 
dynamite factory for the benefit of both companies, to save 

298 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 299 

them the extortionate charges made by the importing 
firms ; and induced De Beers to devote large amounts of 
its earnings to experiments valuable to the colony, such as 
horse-breeding and farming. 

One subject, however, though it still interested him 
deeply, he never touched : the internal affairs of the 
Transvaal. He had burnt his fingers there once, and, as 
he said to a German interviewer, " a burnt child dreads 
the fire. I keep aloof from the whole Transvaal crisis, so 
that no one may be able to say if things go wrong that 
Rhodes is in it again." This self-imposed restraint was 
much eased by his complete confidence in the new Governor, 
who came out in May 1897. Sir Alfred Milner was a man 
after Rhodes's own heart. A pupil and follower of his 
friend Stead in the new conception of the British Empire 
as a power to be strengthened for good in the world by the 
closest union of its parts, he had come to South Africa far 
otherwise equipped for his task than the ordinary colonial 
governor, both in mental attainments and by his long 
training, first in social work and the best kind of journahsm 
and then in high Government posts at home and abroad. 
The two men met on the veld in Rhodesia and conceived a 
liking and admiration for each other. Rhodes naturally did 
not attempt to obtrude his advice about Cape politics or 
Transvaal affairs on Milner, nor would Milner have allowed it ; 
for he was determined to take his own line in dealing with the 
problems which had been agitating South Africa so long and 
to rely on his own judgement. But they had occasionally to 
confer on Rhodesian affairs, especially when Milner came on 
a visit of inspection to that country at the end of 1897, and 
discovered that each was big enough to do his own work 
without interfering with the other. Indeed the relations 
between the two men redound to the credit of both ; for 
they were not easy relations. Rhodes was not wont to make 
it easy for any one who came in his way, governor or no 
governor ; and there was Milner, practically sent to take 
out of his hands affairs he had mismanaged. In respect 
to that particular business Rhodes used to say, " Oh, it's all 
right in Milner' s hands," and left it there quite contentedly. 
Later, when the war had fixed pohcy irretrievably. 



300 CECIL RHODES 

the two men saw one another and corresponded rather 
more freely. Rhodes sends Mihier long letters about his 
proposed scheme for the settlement of English colonists 
in the country districts to the end that they might mix 
more with the Dutch and help to break down the bitterness 
of racial feeling, largely due to want of acquaintance with 
one another. Milner helps Rhodes with suggestions for 
getting over difficulties in Rhodesia, encourages him in 
his trans-continental railway and telegraph plans, and 
gives him a friendly hint as to the best moment for approach- 
ing Chamberlain on a guarantee scheme for the Rhodesian 
railways. " The objection you may take to all this is," 
he writes, " that you are going over now and not in the 
autumn, and I quite agree that, as your personal advocacy 
of the scheme in London is essential to its success, it would 
be a bore for you not to be able to settle it now, as this 
might involve another journey at an early date. I admit 
this, but I fancy that, if my arguments are good, and the 
chances of your succeeding six months or a year hence are 
far greater than now, you would make very little of the 
personal inconvenience." 

But the letter which best shows the relations between 
the two men is one written by Lord Milner when some 
busybodies were trying to stir up strife between them. 
Rhodes had apparently once done the same thing on his 
side, " a confidence," says Milner, " which you once showed 
me, and for which I have always felt grateful." As to 
the present attempt, he continues, "it is a crazy scheme, 
and it is not from any fear of your lending an ear to it, 
especially after the generous and consistent support you 
have shown me through all this trying crisis — and that at 
a time when my position was much weaker than it is to-day 
— that I am writing these lines ; . . . [but] in view of the 
future and of the infinite importance, for public reasons, 
of a continued good personal understanding and absolute 
frankness between you and me about the lies, innuendoes 
and suggestions which may be poured into your ear in the 
course of it. Therefore I say to you precisely as you once 
said to me — if you are told anything about myself, which 
implies either that I distrust your co-operation with me. 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 301 

or that I wish to hamper your own big work or detract 
from the influence which you exercise and always must 
exercise in the development of S. Africa — please, do me the 
justice and the kindness absolutely to disbelieve it. I don't 
for the life of me see why we should ever clash, for there is 
work enough for both of us in all conscience, in the next 
year or two, in working out the future of the great British 
country here, which is going, I trust, not only to federate 
itself, as a free nation like Canada and Australia, but to 
be one of the means of federating the Empire. 

" Of course, we may differ, here and there, as to policy. 
If so, I am sure we can in the future, as in the past, discuss 
all differences frankly and with mutual trust, brushing 
aside the suspicions and the arriere-pensees which certain 
reptiles are never tired of trying to implant in the minds of 
both of us." 

Among the schemes Rhodes took up with special zest 
after his fall was model farming on a great scale. He had 
been ruminating such a project when he was Prime Minister, 
"as an example which will be a large benefit throughout 
the colony," but he does not seem to have taken it up 
seriously till he was released from the trammels of office. 
His original idea was that it should be an enterprise financed 
with De Beers money, and so he proposed to the shareholders 
in his speech at Kimberley in 1896. But, as was often his 
way, he began the work as a private experiment of his 
own in partnership with Beit. His own modest account 
of the experiment is given in a letter he wrote to Lord 
Milner : *' In a small way I have tried to encourage fruit 
cultivation in the Cape Colony and possess some twenty 
or thirty farms in the Paarl and Stellenbosch districts. 
Owing to their special knowledge the men in charge of 
these farms are almost entirely EngHsh, who have studied 
fruit-cultivation in California ; and for the first time we 
have a number of English on the land in these districts. 
At first they were looked upon with suspicion and distrust 
by their neighbours.^ This feeUng has now totally altered. 

1 When Rhodes first began to purchase farms, there was a hubbub 
in 0ns Land, the Dutch, paper, Rhodes being accused of sinister designs 
on the Dutch. So great secrecy had to be maintained at first about the 
sales. 



302 CECIL RHODES 

They mix socially with the neighbouring farmers ; they are 
intermarrying with the Dutch and the whole tone of these 
two districts is changing." The experiment was begun 
about 1897 with the engagement of Mr. Pickstone, a man 
of great experience in the methods of Califomian fruit 
growing and packing, who had hitherto failed in his South 
African ventures, but whom Rhodes unhesitatingly picked 
out as the very man for the job. Rhodes's confidence was 
fully justified, for no man could have been more whole- 
hearted in his devotion to his employer's interests or to 
his idea in starting the scheme. Under his careful manage- 
ment the farms were rapidly developed and made examples 
to the whole of South Africa in scientific fruit culture. 
Within four years some 150,000 fruit trees — pears, apples, 
prunes, apricots, peaches and Japanese plums — were 
planted on the quincunx system ; and it was calculated 
that in the fourth year from planting the orchards should 
pay their expenses. Vines also were planted on some of 
the farms, and plans were made for artificial irrigation, for 
a cannery and for a light railway to take the produce to 
market or on shipboard for export. Special attention was 
paid to this export trade, to develop which Rhodes spared 
no expense in bringing over expert sorters and packers 
from America. This proved so successful that the first 
sample cases sent to Covent Garden and to America were a 
revelation to the dealers and gave the start to a new South 
African industry, an industry which has now attained 
such large proportions that Cape plums, once a rarity for 
the millionaire's table, are now seen everywhere, even 
on the humble coster's barrow. Both Rhodes and his 
manager were determined that the experiment should not 
be a mere luxury, but put on a paying basis as soon as 
possible, for, as the latter said, " A scheme founded on 
philanthropic lines is of no benefit to the community, but 
a business scheme, which can pay a dividend, is of undoubted 
assistance to any country." 

But the farm experiment did not end there. Mr. 
Baker discovered that one of the farms had excellent clay 
for tile- and brick-making ; just the thing needed for the 
introduction of a South African tile industry, which he and 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 303 

Rhodes were anxious to create ; so the latest brick-kilns 
and tile works were established and a new manufacture 
started. Rhodes also built a model village on another of 
the farms for the coloured labourers on the estate. The 
village was designed by Mr. Baker, and had a church and a 
parsonage for the Dutch parson engaged to look after the 
spiritual wants of the inhabitants. One of the coloured 
women was once describing to a visitor how she came there. 
*' Let me tell you," said she, " that I was living with all 
my family in a little one -roomed pondokice [i.e. mud 
hut], as most of us coloured labourers are obliged to live, 
and the * Big Master ' came to see me and he looked at me 
and my hovel and said, ' Now if I give you a nice cottage, 
all beautifully clean and pretty for the same rent you pay 
for this hovel, viz. los. a month, will you promise me to 
ever keep it as you find it, clean and bright ? ' ' Yes,' I 
replied, and the ' Big Master ' smiled and did as he said, 
and now I and all who live here keep our cottages as you 
see them to-day, always skoon en blink [i.e. clean and shin- 
ing], for you see at any moment the ' Big Master ' may come 
and we must keep our promises. Don't come and tell us 
any lies about him, for we know what he has done and 
we love him." Rhodes, indeed, was a model employer. 
Whereas most farmers tried to influence their boys entirely 
through the wine bottle, the rule on Rhodes's Farms was 
that no wine was given ; and it was found that the boys 
were best influenced by the managers being able themselves 
to do the work. 

Finally, after Rhodes had proved the success of the 
experiment, the estate and business of " Rhodes's Fruit 
Farms " was turned into a limited liability company, in 
which nearly all the shares were held by Rhodes himself, 
Beit and De Beers, each of these having provided over 
£60,000 of the initial capital required, and Rhodes having 
made all the first advances out of his own pocket. 

He also had two farms of his own, which he dearly 
loved, in Rhodesia. He loved them perhaps for the reason 
he gave in one of his speeches : " Because life on a South 
African farm gives a good deal of time for thinking." 
One was a vast estate of 100,000 acres at Inyanga, in 



304 CECIL RHODES 

Eastern Mashonaland, which he bought in 1897 for over 
£50,000. This was given over to the management of his 
friend Grimmer, and was especially valuable as grazing 
ground. Here Rhodes made trials of various kinds of stock. 
Angora goats, sheep and cattle of different breeds, to see 
if they were suited to the chmate of Rhodesia. He also 
tried cereals, vegetables and fruit trees, but without great 
success. " Do you not think Inyanga the best place in 
Africa for farming ? " he asked one of his farmers ; "I 
should hke to see it next year about February or March, 
as I am very fond of the place." The difference between 
this and the other farm, Westacre in the Matoppos, was 
thus expressed by one who knew them both : " Inyanga 
is a country like Scotland, which to enjoy one must walk 
over : Matoppos one rides through." 

During his long sojourn in those Matoppo Hills in 1896 
he had discovered two spots which made a lasting impression 
upon him. One was the hill with the wonderful view which 
he came upon in the course of a long ride with George 
Wyndham and Grey, and promptly christened the " View 
of the World." Near by was Moselikatze's grave, which 
had made so strong an appeal to his sense of fitness and 
grandeur.^ Some Philistine had rifled the remains, and 
Rhodes had immediately recovered them, summoned all 
the chief Matabeles, and re-interred them with fitting 
barbaric pomp. He had also determined to make the 
" View of the World " the Westminster Abbey of Rhodesia, 
— " My church is the Mountain," he used to say at Cape 
Town, — there to put up the Wilson Memorial and the 
monuments of any who should hereafter deserve well of 
Rhodesia. Here, too, was to be his own last resting-place, 
his bit of 6 feet by 4 feet, that he was wont to speak of as 
his last possession. 

The other discovery was a tract of singularly rich soil 
by a gap in the hills. " Providence," he said, " left this 
gap in the hills for a purpose, and we must respond. Get 
a good engineer and arrange for him to prepare surveys for 
a dam and furnish us with an estimate of the cost." Hardly 
sooner said than done. Mr. M' Donald, the factor to whom 

1 See Chap. XIV. p. 231. 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 305 

charge was given of the estate Rhodes had promptly 
bought near the gap, was told to get the work going. The 
plans for the undertaking, which was to cost some £30,000, 
took a year to prepare, hardly quick enough for Rhodes*s 
impatience ; but then he himself was largely to blame, for 
during the preparation of the plans and also during the 
whole course of the work he was always making fresh 
suggestions. He made friends with Aird, the contractor 
for the great Nile dam, and was always taking hints from 
him and others about the best models of valve or other 
new devices in dam-construction. *' Mr. Rhodes," says 
M'Donald wearily, " keeps making alterations, which I 
admit have so far been good. He talks dams with every- 
body that has one, and gets new ideas which his secretary 
writes me at his request." The construction, which was 
pressed on with the utmost goodwill by factor, engineer 
and workmen, took nearly four years. As always happens 
in such enterprises, faults in the rock and other unexpected 
troubles occurred ; but when at last completed it was 
a triumphant success. The scale of the undertaking may 
be gauged from the measurements of the embankment, 
which was 1200 feet long, 75 feet high, 15 feet wide at the 
top, and 390 feet at the bottom ; the reservoir stretched 
back from this embankment a quarter of a mile and held 
50 milUon gallons of water, and it was calculated to irrigate 
2000 acres in the valley below. 

The Matoppos farm, Hke Inyanga, was principally used 
as an experimental station for the benefit of the settlers, 
a purpose that was perpetuated by the clause in the will 
directing the trustees to cultivate both farms " for the 
instruction of the people of Rhodesia." Oats, maize, 
mangels, potatoes and lucerne do best on the Matabeleland 
farm, which also makes a good show of pigs, poultry, cattle, 
ostriches and fruit trees. Rhodes here, as at Groote 
Schuur, wanted others to share what gave him so much 
delight. At the opening of the railway to Buluwayo in 
1897 he invited all the assembled guests to a huge picnic 
he gave there, and he always encouraged chance visitors 
or holiday-makers from Buluwayo to come out and see 
the View of the World. Later he had an hotel built 

X 



3o6 CECIL RHODES 

in the neighbourhood and a light railway made from 
Buluwayo ; none too soon, for his sorely tried factor 
complains that he had had to entertain about 150 visitors 
within two and a half months. But, with Henry V., 
Rhodes could exclaim, " I care not who doth feed upon 
my cost/' Rhodes was particularly fond of sending out 
thither tired secretaries or friends, believing that quiet 
meditation in that glorious scenery was the best cure 
for jangled nerves. For the same reason he kept 
on one of his quite impracticable farmers, a regular 
Diogenes he is described, because, in spite of his vile 
farming, " his philosophical meditations " were suited to 
the place. 

In April 1898 Rhodes was restored to the board of the 
British South Africa Company : not that it made any real 
difference to his power, for during the two years he had been 
off the board he had taken a greater part in the affairs of the 
country than at any previous period ; and the chairman said 
he had always been consulted on every important decision : 
but it pleased and touched him. The meeting at which he 
was re-elected was packed. His name was proposed by 
one of his old Rhodesians, Weston- Jarvis, who gave as his 
best quahj&cation that he was accessible to all men, and 
seconded by the Duke of Abercom. By the cheers from the 
whole hall that greeted this nomination and that were 
redoubled when Rhodes appeared and stood forward to 
address them, the shareholders showed that they had lost 
nothing of their old enthusiasm and affection for him. He 
had already been negotiating with the Colonial Office 
about the new constitution for Rhodesia, rendered necessary 
by the Jameson Raid. The chief points of interest in the 
new Order in Council, issued in November 1898, were 
three. First, the Imperial Government took definite powers 
of exercising control over the administration of the country 
by providing for a resident commissioner to act as the High 
Commissioner's eyes and ears, and an Imperial Command- 
ant-General over the Company's police and volunteers. 
Secondly, Rhodes secured his long-cherished object of a 
clause to prevent the raising of the Rhodesian customs 
duties on British imports above the existing Cape tariff, a 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 307 

first step, he hoped, to a general system of preference for 
the Empire, and, by its insertion in the constitution, as 
difficult to alter, he argued, as a clause in the United 
States constitution. Thirdly, a move was made in the 
direction of self-government by the establishment of a 
legislative council, of which the settlers were entitled to 
elect a minority of the members. In his speech at Bulu- 
wayo in June 1896 Rhodes had indicated that he was in 
favour of this, and at Salisbury in the following November 
had dwelt more explicitly on the near approach of a 
representative system, with the sole reservation that, as 
long as the shareholders paid for the country, the Company 
must have the deciding voice. Since the directors endorsed 
his views Chamberlain was only too willing to give effect 
to the proposal. 

No trouble seemed too great for him and no detail too 
trivial when it was a question of Rhodesia. He looked 
forward to the day when Southern Rhodesia, as a self- 
governing community, would take a decisive part in South 
African politics, and he was convinced that the best means 
of hastening the day was by developing the country's 
resources and making the settlers self-supporting. Sir 
Arthur Lawley and Sir William Milton, the joint-adminis- 
trators who succeeded Grey, were helped by him in every 
effort to improve conditions and remove grievances. He 
founded settlements of Fingoes and Bechuanas to increase 
the labour supply and give an example of good native 
methods of agriculture to the Matabeles and Mashonas ; 
he sanctioned a Salvation Army colony under General 
Booth, and, as always, welcomed new Dutch and English 
settlers. He sent Mr. E. B. Sargent, an authority on 
questions of education, to plan a good system of national 
schools. He encouraged by judicious concessions all efforts 
by genuine workers to develop the gold mines, in which 
he had the greatest confidence as the chief resource of the 
country. Northern Rhodesia also, though he never visited 
it, was not forgotten. He sent two men, Codrington and 
Coryndon, in whom he had confidence, to govern it, and 
kept a sharp look-out on their proceedings. There the 
conditions of climate were so different and the white settlers 



3o8 CECIL RHODES 

so few that he insisted on native police instead of an expen- 
sive and useless European force, of whom he caustically 
observed : " They would do nothing excepting get fever. 
Their day's work would be eating three meat-meals, lying 
on their backs on stretchers : for the balance, reading 
Tit-Bits and devoting their conversation to cursing the 
country and the Chartered Company. I don't blame them." 
He did all he could to help prospecting companies, such as 
Mr. R. Williams's Tanganyika Concessions Syndicate, to 
discover new openings for mining or agricultural enterprise. 
And everywhere peace and good order were gradually 
established. Lord Selborne, who visited Northern Rhodesia 
in 1907, only seven years after the Chartered Company took 
over full responsibihty for it, thus testifies to the value of 
the work inaugurated there by Rhodes : "I travelled 
through the country with the same safety and in the same 
atmosphere of the existence of a civilizing influence that I 
should find in the native territories of Cape Colony or in 
Basutoland. . . . And yet it is not more than fifteen years 
ago since the Matabele perpetrated their last wholesale 
massacre on the Batoka plateau, or since the Barotse 
themselves raided one of their subject tribes. ... It is 
less than that since masters killed their slaves at will, 
and since people were constantly being executed for witch- 
craft." 

He was not so successful in his dealings with the Govern- 
ment about railway extension. The Matabele rebellion had 
brought home to him the need of a more rapid construction 
of the railways to connect the isolated parts of Rhodesia 
with sources of supply and reinforcements. Thanks chiefly 
to the exertions of Sir Charles Metcalfe and the contractors 
the railway was brought into Buluwayo by 1897 : in the same 
year Beira was connected with Umtali and two years later 
with Salisbury. But Rhodes had another railway, not so 
obviously necessary for the defence of Rhodesia, almost 
equally at heart : the Cape to Cairo railway. The first 
section he proposed to lay was from Salisbury across the 
Zambesi through N.E. Rhodesia to the southern end of 
Lalce Tanganyika : the Imperial Government had already 
agreed to a railway in Uganda, and he had arranged 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 309 

with his friend Kitchener ^ to bring the Egyptian and Soudan 
system to the northern border of Uganda ; arrangements 
were even made for securing that the gauges of the Egyptian 
and South African systems should be identical : the only 
portion left over, therefore, was from Tanganyika to the 
south of Uganda, which he hoped could be settled with 
the German or Congolese Governments. The demand he 
made on the British Government was for a guarantee 
on the section from Salisbury northward to Tanganyika. 
Chamberlain was at first not averse to the proposal ; but 
Hicks-Beach, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would agree 
only upon such impossible conditions that Rhodes gave 
up the idea of a Government guarantee in disgust. Though 
he contained himself enough in his public statement to 
the shareholders to earn Chamberlain's thanks, in private 
he remarked of Sir Michael that " he reminds me of the 
young man in the Bible with our Saviour when asked to 
part with his wealth.'' But he was not beaten, and set 
himself doggedly to collect the capital from shareholders 
of the Chartered Company, friends in the City and other 
companies interested in Rhodesian development. The 
route was changed from a north-easterly to a north-westerly 
direction chiefly in order to tap the recently discovered 
Wankie coalfields : this route had the additional advantage 
to Rhodes's eyes of crossing the Zambesi just below the 
Victoria Falls ; "I should hke the spray from them to 
dash against the railway carriages," he said, and added 
pathetically, " I want to get there at once, as there is Uttle 
satisfaction in knowing the railway will reach there after 
one's death." But he never saw the Falls. 

As his Trans-African telegraph approached Tanganyika, 
he began to be anxious about the strip between that point 
and Uganda. It is true that by the Rosebery treaty of 
1894 provision had been made to connect the Hne through 

^ Kitchener and he had long had an understanding about a junction 
between their respective spheres of work. Chaf&ng telegrams were inter- 
changed between them when Kitchener got to Sobat and later to Khartoum 
in his Soudan expedition, Kitchener telhng Rhodes he was likely to be 
behindhand at the trysting-place, and Rhodes answering that that was 
the only fly in his ointment. Kitchener also took special care to tell 
Rhodes of his brother Frank's wound in the campaign and of his re- 
instatement in the army. 



310 CECIL RHODES 

Congo territory, but unfortunately King Leopold had not 
received the stipulated payment of the Lado enclave ; ^ and 
Rhodes's opinion of that monarch was " that it will be 
very difficult ever to get him to any practical conclusion 
unless he has by far the best of the bargain." The alter- 
native route to Uganda was through German East Africa. 
So in March 1899, on his way back to England from Egypt, 
where he had been making arrangements with Kitchener and 
Cromer for Unking up his line with theirs, he paid visits to 
Leopold IL and the Kaiser, to find out from which of the 
two monarchs he could get the better terms. Little is known 
of what actually passed in his private interviews with them,^ 
but the results are clear. He always afterwards spoke of 
Leopold with the utmost loathing, and as he came out of 
his room caught hold of our military attache, who happened 
to be passing, and hissed in his ear : " Satan, I tell you that 
man is Satan." At any rate he got nothing out of him. 

With the Kaiser he found himself at once on the best 
footing. The interview seems to have started happily with 
the genial interchange of chaff about the Kaiser's telegram 
of January 1896 ; ^ and when it was over Rhodes came 
out with a promise that he should have every facility 
for taking his telegraphs through German East Africa. 
At an Embassy dinner where the two met again they had 
another long talk together, at the end of which the Emperor 
called up one of his Ministers and said, " Make a note of 
this, that when Mr. Rhodes gets into our territory he does 
not require a military escort for his workers, as that would 
put him to unnecessary expense." Some of the details had 
to be worked out between Rhodes and Von Biilow and other 
German Ministers, and the final agreement was not signed 
till the end of the year, after the despatch of a cable signed 
" C. J. Rhodes " : " What about my telegraph ? I am close 
to the German border and should not Hke to enter German 
territory without authority. The only alternative dismissing 
whole staff " ; the cable happily arrived when the Kaiser was 

1 See Chap. XII. p. 181. 

2 Rhodes sent a long letter describing the interviews to the Prince 
of Wales (afterwards Edward VII.) ; but the letter does not seem to have 
been preserved. 

* See Chap. XV. p. 274. 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 311 

about to visit England and wanted to improve English feeling 
by publishing the fact of the agreement. In a letter to 
the Foreign Office Rhodes explained that the Germans 
naturally required a quid pro quo for their concession, 
in the shape of permission to land their trans-Atlantic 
cable at Waterville or Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland. 
Rhodes urges the Foreign Office to agree to these terms on 
the grounds that we ought not to foster the monopoly of 
the existing American Company and that we should have 
more control over the German cable if it landed in our 
territory than if it were laid under the sea all the way to 
America. Finally, the only condition foi permission to 
carry the telegraph Une through German East Africa was 
that the Chartered Company shoiild not make a railway Une 
to connect with the west coast except through German 
S.W. Africa ; while a promise was given that if the 
Germans themselves could not find the capital for a railway 
fine through German East Africa Rhodes should be allowed 
to construct it. 

Within less than a year of this agreement the telegraph 
fine had been laid over fifty miles in German territory ; 
and Rhodes had calculated to a nicety the cost of construc- 
tion from Cape Town to Port Said, the staff required for 
maintenance, the charge to be made for messages and the 
dividend that would be payable on capital.^ He humorously 
defended to the shareholders of the Chartered Company his 
tariff arrangements with the Egyptian Government before 
he was on their borders and at their mercy on the ground 
that, " I will not say for a moment that they would black- 
mail us, but I have always found my own countrymen 
are particularly good at a bargain, especially if you find 
they are the sole people to be dealt with.'' Another result 
of his interview with the Kaiser was that he lost all his 
apprehensions of German designs against England in Africa, 
and carried away a vivid appreciation of the Kaiser's quick 
and business -Hke methods. In subsequent speeches he 
described him as " a big man," " a broad-minded man " ; 

^ It illustrates Rhodes's thorough methods that to ensure exactitude 
in his calculations he obtained from Australia all relative statistics about 
their trans-continental line. 



312 CECIL RHODES 

and to a German shortly afterwards he wrote : " Your 
Emperor was very good to me. As far as myself is con- 
cerned, I shall not alter my determination to work with 
the German colonies in Africa," and in answer to a tele- 
gram of congratulation from the Kaiser after the relief of 
Kimberley expressed great deUght at " the good feeling 
your Emperor showed to us." But the most remarkable 
testimony of his personal gratitude was the provision in 
a codicil to his will that the German Emperor should choose 
a certain number of Rhodes scholars annually from his 
people. 

During this eventful year, 1899, Rhodes may well have 
felt that the seal was set to his rehabilitation by two great 
testimonies to the honour in which he was held. The first 
was at the last meeting he ever addressed of the British 
South Africa Company, when the vast hall at the Cannon 
Street Hotel could not contain the crowd of shareholders 
that pressed to see and hear him, and after the principal 
meeting he had to address an overflow meeting on the 
stairs and corridors, being piloted through the throng by 
two or three big, burly, smiling policemen. His opening 
words indicated unwonted shyness at this great demonstra- 
tion : "I suppose that the most unhappy thing in the 
world is for a public man to make a speech, especially the 
night and day beforehand. The only simile I can think of 
would be, perhaps, the night and morning of one of our 
forefathers, just before he went to a State execution." But 
he soon took heart and made one of his usual rattling, 
practical speeches. 

The other and still more welcome testimony was the 
degree of D.C.L., honoris causa, conferred on him at Encaenia 
by his old and much-loved university. He had the added 
gratification of receiving the honour at the same time as 
Kitchener, the friend who was working in co-operation with 
him from the other end of Africa, the recent victor of 
Omdurman. There had been some opposition to the degree 
in Oxford, but this was more than counterbalanced by 
the extra warmth of the reception accorded him. He was 
ingenuously pleased and said so, as soon as he got back 
to Cape Town. After describing his interview with the 



THE ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 313 

Kaiser, he went on : " And then, sir, I had the good luck 
to meet Lord Kitchener in London. We met very fre- 
quently, and we rode in the park together. I think horse 
exercise increases the activity of the brain. And we came 
to a distinct understanding, and I think you will hear 
before very long that funds have been provided for Lord 
Kitchener to proceed from Khartoum to Uganda. I had 
the opportunity of meeting him on several occasions. We 
met at Oxford. Talking of Oxford, really one sometimes 
feels fortunate in having done very wrong, because it brings 
out the affection and support of one's people. Some pos- 
sessed of the most complete rectitude at Oxford thought 
I was unworthy of receiving the degree that had been 
awarded to me. Perhaps it was the most fortunate thing 
that ever happened to me — I mean their opposition. I 
went to Oxford with the great general, on whom the eyes 
of the world were fixed. I think, sir, I should have been 
almost nobody if it had not been for this opposition to me. 
But I can assure you, gentlemen, they gave me a greater 
reception than Lord Kitchener, and you must remember 
that they were not mere undergraduates of eighteen, but 
Masters of Arts, gentlemen with grey beards, because after 
the day's proceedings, the undergraduates numbered 400 
and the others numbered 5000. Gentlemen, I mention 
this because one's troubles have brought out one's friends." 
In more serious vein was the speech he made at the 
luncheon given in his honour by his old college. Oriel. 
" Sometimes," he began, " in pursuing my object, the 
enlargement of the British Empire, and with it the cause of 
peace, industry and freedom, I have adopted means in 
removing opposition which were the rough-and-ready way 
and not the highest way to attain that object. But you 
must remember that in South Africa, where my work has 
lain, the laws of right and equity are not so fixed and 
estabhshed as in this country ; and if I have once or twice 
done things which savoured rather of violence than of 
protest or peaceful striving, yet you must look back to far- 
off times in Enghsh history for a parallel to the state of 
things in South Africa. I beHeve my neighbour, the Regius 
Professor of History, could tell you that in those past times 



314 



CECIL RHODES 



there have been not a few men who have done good service 
to the State, but some of whose actions have partaken of 
the violence of their age, which are hard to justify in a more 
peaceful and law-abiding age. It is among those men that 
my own Ufe and actions must be weighed and measured ; 
and I trust to the justice of my countrymen, of which I 
thought I read some forecast in the kind reception and 
appreciation awarded to me here in my old college." 



CHAPTER XVIII 



LAST DAYS 



When the South African War broke out in October 1899, 
Rhodes was a tired man. The control over himself, which 
the catastrophe of the Raid had for a time restored, was 
gradually slipping away. His temper, hot and fiery at 
the best of times, began to regain the mastery ; and he 
observed no measure with those who had for any cause 
displeased him. He had long and heated controversies 
with co-directors in several of his companies, rating them 
for not having in all respects followed his advice and speak- 
ing with a rather sad arrogance of all his own previous 
services to their shareholders. He often spoke harshly and 
inconsiderately to subordinates for faults which in better 
days he would have treated with good-humoured indulgence. 
To an unfortunate railway manager, for example, who was 
slower than he Uked in sending in some accounts, he tele- 
graphs in clear, so that all might read : "I order you again 
to send the accounts . . to Cape Town. . . . Absolute 
nonsense your suggesting settlement of accounts should 
wait. ... Be good enough to do as you are told " ; and 
to the unfortunate man's protests against his '* insulting 
telegrams " and a " fearful letter " he vouchsafes no reply. 
In fact it gets to such a pitch that he can barely brook 
a word of contradiction except from the faithful friend of 
happier times, the beloved Doctor, who exercises over him 
almost the only soothing influence. The excuse, and it is 
some excuse, for this loss of control is that no man's mental 
and physical strength could stand the tremendous strain 
Rhodes had been putting on his throughout his hfe, and 
especially during the last four years. 

315 



3i6 CECIL RHODES 

Rhodes had taken no part in the negotiations preceding 
the war. In accordance with his settled policy he had 
scrupulously left all such matters entirely in Sir Alfred 
Milner's hands. But he had expressed a very decided 
belief that it would not come to hostiUties. In September 
he had, perhaps rather inadvisedly, presented Kniger with 
a lion for his Zoo, and was highly indignant when it was 
returned to him with scant ceremony. "I see no connec- 
tion," he wrote to the director of the Pretoria Zoo, " between 
a Zoological Gardens and your Government's present differ- 
ences with H.M.'s Government. It is the first time that 
lions and politics have been mixed up. I suppose some one 
must have chaffed them about the British lion." Both 
publicly and privately he committed himself to the forecast 
that " Kruger wiU at the final push give anything . . . 
nothing wiU make Kruger fire a shot " ; for he judged from 
the ease with which the President had been made to climb 
down about the Drifts affair. The fact was that Rhodes 
had never fully reahzed the difference wrought by the Raid 
in South African politics. Kruger himself would probably 
not have yielded about the treatment of the Uitlanders, 
Raid or no Raid ; but before that incident Kruger' s own 
position was being so rapidly sapped by the growing 
alienation of the Cape Dutch and by the opposition to his 
policy in his own country that, had there been no Raid, 
the obstinate old man would ere this almost certainly have 
fallen. The Raid had restored his prestige and given a 
new lease of fife to his obstinacy. Moreover, Rhodes forgot 
that though his deaUngs with the Kaiser may have convinced 
him that his own apprehensions of German intrigue were 
ill-founded, Kruger had not forgotten the telegram and 
assuredly counted on help from Germany. 

On the eve of the ultimatum Rhodes insisted on taking 
his place among the defenders of his diamond mines at 
Kimberley. It was a great risk, because the Boers were 
known to be anxious to capture him, and the story went 
that they had planned to exhibit him in a cage as a prisoner 
throughout the Transvaal. He did extraordinarily good 
work during the long siege in practical measures for the 
security and support of the inhabitants. He opened a 



LAST DAYS 317 

soup-kitchen to feed the poor, constantly supplied the 
hospital with grapes from the De Beers vines and other 
luxuries, arranged for the underground workings of the 
mines to be used as shell-proof shelters for the women and 
children, raised bands of natives to act as runners, provided 
horses and equipment for the volunteer corps, and even 
succeeded in getting a 28-pounder rifled gun designed and 
turned out from the De Beers workshops, a gun appro- 
priately christened " Long Cecil." But when all this is 
said, it must be admitted that Rhodes did not do himself 
credit at the Kimberley siege. He could not understand 
that in a beleaguered town the military officers must 
necessarily be supreme. He was accustomed to give orders 
and not to receive them, and he expected the same rule to 
be observed on this occasion. Naturally Colonel Kekewich 
did not take the same view^ of his duties, with the result 
that long before the end of the siege the two men were not 
on speaking terms. This was bad enough, for when the 
principal civilian in the town was notoriously insubordinate, 
Kekewich' s task in maintaining discipline among the 
inhabitants was made exceedingly difficult. But this was 
not the worst ; for Rhodes from the outset conceived the 
idea that all other operations in the war should be brought 
to a standstill until Kimberley was relieved. Almost before 
the siege had begun he had started bombarding the Governor, 
Lord Methuen, and other military authorities with demands 
for a relieving force to be sent forthwith. He wrote to 
Colonel Baden-Powell at Mafeking urging him to take the 
same line, he summoned a special meeting of the De Beers 
directors to make similar representations, and when Roberts 
and Kitchener came out he was equally vociferous to them. 
It is, of course, absurd to imagine that he was anxious about 
his own skin, but he was suffering, in an intensified form, 
from the same malady which had characterized some of his 
deaHngs with Lord Salisbury and other Ministers, a complete 
inability to see the importance of anything which inter- 
fered with his own immediate object. Knowing nothing of 
the relative value of objectives in a campaign and having 
always a profound contempt for soldiers as such, he decided 
that the failure to relieve Kimberley at once was simply 



3i8 CECIL RHODES 

another instance of military incapacity. It is perfectly 
true that it would have been a serious blow to the British 
cause had Kimberley fallen, but not so serious, in spite 
of all the diamond mines, as to make it worth while to 
divert the whole course of the campaign to save it. 

Throughout the campaign there was the same inabihty 
in Rhodes to conceive that any military object ought to 
stand in the way of his own plans. When it was not Kim- 
berley it was something else. Immediately after the siege 
he offered to forward supplies to Roberts and Kitchener, 
provided " I have full power and no one to interfere with 
me. . . . Reply sharp as otherwise I am going to Cape 
Town." The Field-Marshal and his Chief of the Staff must 
have felt embarrassed at this peremptory offer of their 
would-be Moses, the more so as he showed a disposition 
to dictate to them what their base of supply should be 
and how many waggon-loads they ought to require : and 
the arrangement did not last long. In the later stages of 
the war he again came into conflict with Kitchener. 
Kitchener wanted to finish off the guerilla war as soon as 
possible and ordered that all available railway rolling-stock 
should be employed for military purposes : Rhodes was tired 
of the war and thought it more important that his rolling- 
stock should be employed in developing Rhodesia. It had 
so happened that when Kitchener was pressing forward 
his desert railway for the Soudan campaign, Rhodes had 
generously come to his help by allowing him to have some 
of his new engines destined for Rhodesia ; and now he takes 
care to remind him of his debt. " Tell K.," he wires to the 
staff officer, " I lost a lot of time by giving up my engines 
for his Khartoum trip. I really think this time he should 
leave my rolling-stock alone." But even this personal 
appeal ad hominem seems to have met with no response. 

Yet there were still flashes of the great man. One such 
flash came in October 1900, when Lord Roberts, having 
reached Pretoria and dispersed the Boer forces, declared 
that the war was practically at an end ; and this dictum 
was for a short time accepted by the English, among others 
by Rhodes. To celebrate the victory of our arms he was 
invited and consented to address a meeting of tlie South 



LAST DAYS 319 

African League at Cape Town, a body of loyal propagandists, 
of which he was president. The meeting was held on a fine 
sunny morning of a South African spring day. The Moun- 
tain above was clear and sharp, the air fresh : a sense of 
joy and hope was about. In contrast to the glory outside 
the meeting gave a dreary impression. It was a mean hall 
and the audience looked dull : the time being morning, few 
men were present, and most of the seats were filled with 
fanatical-looking ladies, who seemed to regard the event 
they were celebrating as a national triumph of English 
over Dutch, and by look and tone showed that they at any 
rate would have scant mercy on the vanquished. Then 
Rhodes strode in, marched straight to his seat, looking 
neither to right nor left, and almost at once plunged into his 
discourse. He was an altered man since that other entry 
into the committee room at Westminster four years ago. 
He still had a shy manner, but not the same dazed and 
nervous look ; physically, though, he was much changed 
for the worse, with the puffy face and bloated appearance 
that often comes with an affection of the heart. As he 
spoke his audience hardly seemed to exist for him. He 
never glanced at them or at the sordid surroundings, but 
kept his gaze fixed above their heads at the window in front 
of him, with that strange dreamer's look in his eyes, as if 
he were straining for a sight of his Mountain and beyond to 
the clean sun-washed uplands of the country he had made 
his own. His first words were like a trumpet-call ; but it 
was a call little in tune with the mood of such an audience : 
" You think you have beaten the Dutch ! But it is not so. 
The Dutch are not beaten ; what is beaten is Krugerism, a 
corrupt and evil government, no more Dutch in essence 
than EngHsh. No ! The Dutch are as vigorous and un- 
conquered to-day as they have ever been ; the country is 
still as much theirs as it is yours, and you will have to live 
and work with them hereafter as in the past. Remember 
that when you go back to your homes in the towns or in 
the up-country farms and villages : let there be no vaunting 
words, no vulgar triumph over your Dutch neighbours ; 
make them feel that the bitterness is past and that the 
need of co-operation is greater than ever ; teach your 



320 CECIL RHODES 

children to remember when they go to their village school 
that the little Dutch boys and girls they find sitting on the 
same benches with them are as much part of the South 
African nation as they are themselves, and that as they learn 
the same lessons together now, so hereafter they must work 
together as comrades for a common object — the good of South 
Africa." So spake he, and gave them a " thought." ^ 

" What a hypocrite the man must be ! " said an English 
friend to whom this scene was described, a friend still hot 
with wrath at the shame of the Raid, and convinced that 
the war was almost entirely due to Rhodes. But he was 
not a hypocrite : for in this speech you get the whole 
essence of Rhodes 's life-work for union. He bungled it 
for his own time, by his impatience and his folly, but he 
never once swerved from his aim. 

The speech made a great sensation, especially among 
his friends in England. General Brocklehurst ^ wrote : "I 
have been rubbing it into every one since I got back that you 
are the only man who can save South Africa (beginning with 
the Queen), and I am surprised to find how many of your 
enemies agree. I told the Queen you and Gordon were the 
same man, only with different methods — this fairly made 
her jump, but she * saw my point,' as you would say. 
The Government, I am sure, would be only too thankful 
for you to come out of your tent and give them a lead. I 
have said you and Milner are on most cordial terms, so that 
he would approve. My line has been — you propose a Federal 
Parliament right away (no Crown Colonies), yourself at the 
head of it, compensation for both sides for all damage done 
during the war, and general amnesty. I've got rather hung 
up in trying to work this out in detail, but that is where 
Cecil Rhodes comes in, and it would mean peace, or at least 
an alternative to the present policy of trying to sit on 
bayonets, which would probably be accepted by the Boer 
leaders and would bring peace." 

And Lord Grey, ever faithful and enthusiastic, wrote : 
" The full report of your speech which arrived by last mail 

1 Rhodes's exact words are not quoted in the above account, but the 
gist of this speech, spoken twenty years ago, and the whole scene are 
indelibly impressed on my memory. 

2 Now Lord Ranksborough. 



LAST DAYS 321 

has more than confirmed the good impression created by the 
cabled summary, and has further justified the contention of 
your Friends that you are the one man who has the 
quaUties of Heart, Head, and Experience required for the 
task of fusing Boer and Briton. 

" Your speech, in my opinion the best you ever made, 
cannot fail to make this view popular even in quarters 
where recently, and perhaps not unnaturally, considering 
all things, there has been a strong prejudice against you. 
I am in hopes that you may be able to find some further 
opportunity of impressing in your own characteristic and 
effective fashion, the necessity of every man doing every- 
thing in his power not only to conquer the resistance but 
to win the affection and confidence of the Boers." 

Some of his old friends in South Africa also urged him 
to come forward again after the fall of the Schreiner 
Ministry in 1900, and Sir Alfred Milner would have welcomed 
him in office. But his heart was chiefly in Rhodesia, and 
he did not feel he had the strength to undertake what at 
best would have proved a thankless task. He was conscious 
indeed that the centre of interest in South African poHtics 
had shifted from his old " dominant state " to the north, 
the Transvaal or even the Chartered Territory ; so much so 
that he signed the unfortunate petition for the suspension 
of the Cape Constitution, a petition which Chamberlain, to 
his credit, emphatically rejected. 

During these last years he put the finishing touches to 
the Will. He made the first will, it will be remembered,^ 
when he was an almost unknown boy of twenty-four, and 
with all the changes of detail introduced later, never altered 
its main purpose of making his wealth a means of advancing 
the highest interests, as he conceived them, of the British 
Empire. His first idea was to leave the Trustees wellnigh 
unfettered in their discretion as to the best means of carrying 
out his intentions. In the final will of 1899, however, he 
laid down explicitly his central notion of a great educational 
scheme to apply to all the English-speaking portions of 
the globe. The plan he adopted, after long consultations 
with his friends Stead and Hawkesley, was to provide 

^ See Chap. VI. pp. 51-52. 

Y 



322 CECIL RHODES 

scholarships for young students from all the self-governing 
colonies and from the States of America of sufficient value 
to enable them to have courses at his own university of 
Oxford, because " I consider that the education of young 
colonists at one of the universities in the United Kingdom 
is of great advantage to them for giving breadth to their 
views, for their instruction in life and manners, and for 
instilling into their minds the advantage to the colonies 
as well as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the 
unity of the Empire. . . . And [because] I also desire to 
encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages 
which I implicitly believe will result from the union of the 
English-speaking people throughout the world." 

In a pencil note to Hawkesley, undated but addressed 
from " Near Aden," he gives his first sketch of the terms on 
which the '* Rhodes Scholarships " are to be granted and 
held : "... The conditions for election should not only 
be for literary attainments, but also due weight should be 
given to the character and social quahties of the candidates, 
especially to their being moderately fond of field sports, 
say cricket and football, I do not want simply ' book- 
worms ' ; you might copy the idea of the All Souls 
condition, * bene natus bene vestitus et moderate doctus.* 
Of course I object to the snobbishness of the bene natus 
bene vestitus, but I quote this to give you my idea : to sum 
up, I mean ' for good literary attainments and a taste for 
outdoor sports.' I have made the amount £250 per annum, 
as I think a young fellow should live for that sum at Oxford 
and not require to pinch himself, but my opinion is he 
cannot do it for less. You wiU note that you will really 
have to provide for nine [i.e. from South Africa], as there 
will be three each year for three years continuously. You 
might point out in the Will that I consider such a course 
of great advantage to young colonists * for giving breadth to 
their views, for giving instruction in life a?id manners, and for 
instilling into their minds the advantage to the Colonies as well 
as to England of the retention of the Unity of the Empire.' 
You might also add a suggestion to the authorities at Oxford 
to try and extend their scope and add if possible to their 
sphere of instruction a medical school, aiming at equalling 



LAST DAYS 323 

the high standard reached at Edinburgh ; there are now 
over fifty South African students there. I should have 
given some of the Scholarships to Edinburgh, but they have 
no residential system and I think it most disastrous that 
young fellows should at the most critical period of their 
lives be left without supervision ; it leads to the ruin of 
many, especially of young Colonists from abroad who have 
no family circles close at hand to act as a check if they have 
a tendency to waste their time and energies in free Uving 
and dissipation. 

" The successful candidates should choose whatever 
College they like at Oxford, it is a mistake for them to 
crowd together at one College, they would get too local, 
they should be spread through the University ; they might 
have a yearly dinner to compare and celebrate their successes 
in the Schools and in the field sports." 

These provisions for the " Rhodes Scholarships " are 
those that attracted most attention in Rhodes's will : 
with these he was himself most happy. Lord Rosebery 
relates his saying to him : " When I find myself in un- 
congenial company, or when people are playing their games, 
or when I am alone in a railway carriage, I shut my eyes 
and think of my great idea. I turn it over in my mind and 
try to get new light on it. It is the pleasantest companion 
i have," The scheme has now been working for nearly 
twenty years, and it has proved at least as great a success 
as the founder hoped. At Oxford, chosen for his experiment 
quia multum dilexit, young men, from every corner of the 
British Empire and from every State of the great Republic 
our fathers founded, come yearly to be taught and to teach 
the common interests of good government, and to put into 
practice the Aristotelian theory of virtue, which Rhodes 
looked on as one of the great precepts of Ufe, i/rf;^^? ivepyela 
Kar aperrjv . . . rrjv dptcrTrjv kol TeXeiordrriv . . . iv /9tft) 
reXetoD, " the exercise of the human faculties in such 
way as to develop the highest excellence in the best 
circumstances." At Oxford, it is said, the Rhodes scholars 
from the Eastern, Middle, and Western States of America 
gain a better knowledge of one another's characteristics 



324 CECIL RHODES 

and of the wider problems of their own commonwealth than 
they could ever have done had they never left America ; 
the Dutch and English students from South Africa, the 
French and English from Canada, the New Zealander and 
the Austrahan meet on common ground to discuss problems 
which for the first time they perceive they have in common ; 
while the whole university in turn gets a closer acquaintance 
with the idiosyncrasies of its own citizens from overseas 
and of the common problems of the English-speaking races. 
The Germans, too, who came thither before the war, had 
learnt to value the peculiarly English life and teaching of 
Oxford : and it is one of the finest indications of the 
Oxford spirit conquering the passions of war that one of the 
colleges commemorated on the same list with the Enghsh- 
men their German Rhodes scholar, who had fallen pro patria. 
Various provisions of the will illustrate other beliefs 
and aims of Rhodes. He gave munificent endowment to 
his old college. Oriel, with a sly indication that the filo^ 
Tekeio^ does not consist exclusively of an undue asceticism ; 
in his dispositions for his own family he took precautions 
that his wealth should never be used to encourage the 
abhorred breed of " loafers," but that it should help to 
foster the old " country gentleman " spirit, to which he 
attributed a large measure of England's greatness. He left 
Groote Schuur to the Prime Minister of the Union of 
South Africa, with ample provision for his comfort and 
dignity : an act of faith in the final reaUzation of the 
policy for which he had made a lifelong struggle. 

His trustees were friends who shared his views, men 
on whom he could rely to carry out his further un- 
written desires for advancing the interests of the British 
Empire : Lord Rosebery, Grey, Beit, Sir Lewis Michell, his 
trusted banker, Hawkesley, Lord Milner, and, a death-bed 
choice, the Doctor. Stead had been one of the original 
trustees, but, though never ceasing to be personal friends, 
they had parted on the South African War, and Rhodes 
had expunged his name " on account of his extraordinary 
eccentricity." 



LAST DAYS 325 

The last months of his life were tragic. He was in 
constant pain from his fatal heart-illness, and vainly sought 
rehef by travel in Italy, in Egypt, or on a moor infScotland. 
From this last sojourning-place he dragged himself back, 
almost dying, to South Africa, to deal with a sordid case, 
in which his name was involved. A woman in whom he 
had been interested had forged his name to a number of 
bills of exchange, and the affair was becoming a scandal in 
Cape Town. He had to give his evidence on his death-bed, to 
which he took as soon as he landed. The last home chosen 
for him by the Doctor, who brought him back and tended 
him with a love passing the love of woman, was a tiny 
cottage at Muizenberg, close to the seashore, where he 
could get all the cooling breezes to help him in the prolonged 
agony for breath. All old passions were hushed during this 
long struggle of the brave fighter, and friends rallied round 
him. Hofmeyr, his old ally, sent him a message of 
reconciliation, and those since parted, who remembered 
pleasant communings with him in the past, brought their 
sympathy. Daily a cable message would be sent to his 
friends in London, with Jameson's hopes or fears of his 
progress, and daily a message of encouragement would 
come back. 

Rhodes himself, dying, had all the humihty of the great 
man who has aimed high, and, as with all those who aim 
highest, has failed in reaching the utmost height. At one 
time, in his pride, he had felt that at least he had achieved 
success which would ensure undying glory for his name : 
but latterly he had come to see the vanity of all human 
striving and the many points in which he, the strong, the 
powerful, had failed. " Everything in the world is too 
short. Life and fame and achievement, everything is too 
short," he had once said in these latter days to Lord 
Roseberj^ : so now, one of his latest utterances, before he 
breathed his last on March 26, 1902, less than fifty years of 
age, was " So little done, so much to do." 

He was buried in his chosen resting-place, the View of 
the World in the Matoppos. A huge concourse greeted 
him for the last time from all parts of South Africa. Besides 
his own most faithful friends those who mourned him most 



326 CECIL RHODES 

deeply were the people of his own chosen land, among whom 
he had come to rest : the settlers and the natives, to both 
of whom he had always stood as the great protector. For 
the settlers Milton, once his secretary, now the administrator 
he had picked out, thus spoke of the " profound gloom and 
sorrow throughout Rhodesia caused by the passing of the 
great figure to whom all the inhabitants have from its 
earliest days been wont to turn in their difficulties and 
doubts for guidance and help. It may be hoped that during 
the trials of his later days our founder and friend may have 
been cheered and sustained by the thought that the fabric 
he had reared rested on no unsure foundation." For the 
natives he had conquered and then succoured Faku, one 
of the chiefs of the 1896 indabas, thus spoke : "I am an 
old man and am on the brink of the grave. I was content 
to die knowing that my children and my people would be 
safe in the hands of Mr. Rhodes ; who was at once my 
father and my mother. That hope has been taken 
from me and I feel that the sun has indeed set for 
me." As the coffin was lowered into the rock-hewn grave 
Faku's tribesmen gave him the royal salute, only given to 
their kings. 

A simple slab with his name carved on it marks the 
spot — 

Is Saul dead ? In the depth of the vale make his tomb — bid arise 
A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the 

skies, 
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers : whose fame 

would ye know ? 
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go 
In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was Saul, so he did. 



This book will have been written in vain, if it has failed 
to give some impression of what manner of man Rhodes 
was, what his faults and what his fine points, his aims and 
his performance : still more will it have failed, has it not 
made plain that he was one of the great men of the world, 
great not mainly for any definite achievement — though 
in achievement he was also great — but for a personality of 



LAST DAYS 327 

resistless energy and dominating force. He was one of 
those rare beings of whom one can say that, whatever he 
turned his hand to, he would have been a master ; and, 
like all such beings, he seemed to have his star, his aura 
of success, which fascinated the world and made it yield 
him even more success than he had asked for. Yet, as 
with Caesar on the Ides of March, or with Napoleon at 
Waterloo, the star suddenly failed him at a crucial moment, 
because in his pride he presumed on success and forgot 
that the strongest may become intolerable. It is this gift 
of dominating personality which is most elusive to describe 
and yet which most interests the world, regardless of 
whether its owner succeeds or fails ; the gift which makes 
all eyes turn to the man who has it, wherever he appears, 
though there may be others present who have achieved 
more or been greater benefactors to humanity. Who 
would turn to look at Brutus, who overcame Caesar, 
could he behold Caesar himself, or even Wellington, were 
Napoleon with him ? A Gibbon, maybe, raised a monu- 
ment to the Roman Empire and to himself greater than 
any single achievement of a Chatham : yet still Gibbon 
remains merely a man who wrote a great book, while 
Chatham, apart from any action, is a supreme personality. 
And so it was with Rhodes : you might hate him, you 
might loathe all he did, you might even think meanly of 
his actual achievement, but you could not ignore him any 
more than you could ignore a flash of lightning that 
suddenly blazes forth across a murky night. 

His achievement also, partly for good, partly for ill, 
was great. For the worst of a man of such dominating 
personality is that his evil example is as potent as the good. 
He was no cynic for himself, nor, doubtless, was he a cynic 
in his outlook on humanity : he cared too much for his 
" fellow-beings " for that. But his Kimberley training led 
him deliberately to adopt a pose of cynicism, which had 
effects almost as baleful as if he had himself been a cynic 
to the core. He himself used his wealth for public objects 
and inspired others to do likewise. Yet by the chances of 
winning an easy fortune on the share market, which he 
offered to those whom he wanted to gain for his great 



328 CECIL RHODES 

designs, he tempted smaller men to think more of the bribe 
than of the design. Rhodes himself, like Walpole, was 
not accessible to motives of self-interest, but nevertheless, 
like Walpole, presuming too much on the temptation to 
others of self-interest, he lowered the standard of pubhc 
life at the Cape and even at home in England. The good 
side of his " sitting down and arguing with a man " had 
thus its sinister reverse. 

Grey, in one of his letters, describes a visit to Watts, 
then at work on his " Physical Energy" : "He took me to the 
statue and said, ' Well, that is Rhodes ! ' " ; and Grey adds, 
" I hope he may decide to give the head of the Rider some 
resemblance to your features, so that it may go out to the 
world as his conception of your character." Rhodes's 
physical and mental energy was indeed abounding ; but 
this very strength sometimes proved a weakness, when he 
had passed away. As long as he lived Rhodesia was bound 
to thrive under his watchful eye. We have seen what 
Faku thought of Rhodes as a father and mother to the 
natives : and it was so with the white settlers. IJad they 
a difficulty in farming ? — go to Rhodes, and it was all right : 
was a railway needed ? — go to Rhodes, and it was put in 
hand forthwith : was the gold law irksome in a particular 
case ? — go to Rhodes and he would make the proper allow- 
ance for the circumstances. He corresponded personally 
with viceroys and colonial governments, he dealt with the 
British or any foreign government as an equal when he 
wanted any concession for Rhodesia. But when he was 
gone, there was no Rhodes to take his place, nor even a 
system as a substitute. Like so many strong men he 
found he could get what he wanted so much more easily 
by personal intervention and by a sic volo, sic jubeo system, 
that he set up no other for the time when he should not 
be there. Five years after his death the settlers were 
complaining that no director of the Chartered Company 
came near them, and they had no one to whom they could 
turn as in the old days of Rhodes's lifetime. The natives, 
too, suffered when he had gone. There was then no one to 
soften their hardships if they had a year of famine or were 
harried. When he was alive he used to send up cattle 



LAST DAYS 329 

to distribute to the natives who did not " loaf " and to 
keep their hearts " white " ; when it came to the bare 
rights allowed them in their comparatively small and even 
curtailed reserves they had good cause to echo Faku's 
lament. 

Fortunately the evil effect of the Raid, Rhodes's worst 
definite fault, passed away, and the policy, of which it was 
a distorted symptom, the union of South Africa, remained 
and gained ever fresh strength after his death. His influence 
on the members of the Convention itself has already been 
alluded to ; ^ on events which led to the Convention it was 
still greater. Before he came on the scene, the Dutch had 
been striving for a Dutch union under a Dutch flag, and 
the English toyed with such fantastic schemes as Froude's 
and Carnarvon's to make federation an excuse for finally 
crushing Dutch aspirations : it is due to him more than to 
any man that English and Dutch in South Africa came to 
see that a joint action for union would alone gain the end 
desired by both. Indirectly, too, he made the English and 
Dutch sides more equal in the bargainings for union by 
his services to the whole of South Africa as well as to the 
British Empire in the acquisition of Rhodesia. The Dutch 
never forgot that, had it not been for him, Rhodesia, like 
South-West Africa, might have passed to Germany, a power 
even more distasteful to them than undiluted England : 
and for the first time they had cause to see that English 
and not Dutch enterprise had brought a great new tract of 
South Africa under the civiUzing influences of Dutch and 
Enghsh combined. 

Rhodes was indeed a faulty hero : what hero is not ? 
But he had great aims, some of which he attained, and 
he had the priceless faculty of inspiring others with the 
same aspirations. Perhaps the purest devotion to those 
aims he ever inspired was found in one of his own Rhodesians. 
Young Hubert Hervey in his Ufetime echoed Rhodes's 
words, when he said, " Only believe in your idea and it 
will carry you through every difficulty. If you live you will 
do great things ; if you die — well ! how can you die better ? 
And your idea will not die." For those aims later he was 

1 See Chap. I. p. 2, and Chap. XVII. p. 297. 



330 CECIL RHODES 

ready to lay down his life. As he lay dying of his wounds 
in the Matabele rebellion, he asked for Rhodes and begged 
him to see that his sister was cared for after his death. 
Rhodes was touched. He spoke thus of him afterwards : 
*' He never thought of himself, he was without self. . . . He 
was without fear — he did not know fear — and without self. 
. . . That feehng about the Empire was the ideal of his life. 
There is a great deal of talk about the Imperial idea, but 
unhappily self is so often beneath it. That is where it is ; 
people say all this, but self is so often at the bottom of it. 
With him it was absolutely pure ; . . . There may be cynical 
people who will say about the Imperial part, ' Oh yes, we 
know it is generally a cover for self.' But when they see 
that half an hour before death he still had not thought about 
himself, that all his thoughts were for others, they will feel 
there was no self in him. Half an hour before death ! I 
had gone to him wondering what he wished — other men 
might have had other thoughts — but his were still, even 
then, only for others." Rhodes, we may beUeve, was so 
deeply stirred, not merely by his love for the young man, 
but yet more because he felt the nobility of that short life 
consecrated his own aims in the face of his fellow-men» 

Such was Rhodes's influence on one among many : of 
this influence generally no one could speak better than 
that disciple of his whom he inspired with a Ufe-long 
devotion to the same ideals. Earl Grey, at the Chartered 
Company's general meeting held in the year succeeding 
Rhodes's death, said of him : " He was in truth the 
most strenuous lover of his country, the most single- 
minded and the greatest-hearted man I ever met. During 
his hfe he gave all his energies and all his wealth to the 
service of the Empire, and in his will he has bequeathed 
to the entire Anglo-Saxon world the priceless legacy of an 
inspiring ideal. ... I have come across, and sometimes in 
the most unexpected quarters, men whose characters have 
been entirely changed by the example of Cecil Rhodes, and 
whose ambition it is now to administer as a public trust 
considerable proportions of those fortunes, which but for 
him they would probably have spent upon themselves." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



I. Oral 



For a Life of Rhodes there are still available the personal recollec- 
tions of many who spoke with him and knew him well. I have had 
the privilege of talking with many such during the last six 3''ears or 
more that this book has been incubating. Some, alas ! of these 
have now passed away ; for it is wellnigh twenty years since Rhodes 
himself died. Among those to whom I am deeply grateful for 
information about Rhodes's career, and still more for many of those 
intimate touches that make the savour of a biography, I should like 
to mention : 



The late Sir Starr Jameson. 
The late Earl Grey. 
The late Sir Frank Lascelles. 
The late Mr. Robert Yerburgh, 

M.P. 
The late Mr. F. C. Selous. 
The late Mr. C. D. Rudd. 
Col. Sir F. Younghusband. 
Mr. and Mrs. Rochfort Maguire, 
Mr. H. Wilson Fox, M.P. 
Sir Ralph Williams. 



Sir Graham Bower. 

Sir Chas. Metcalfe. 

Miss Louisa Rhodes. 

Mr. Herbert Baker. 

Rt. Hon. J. X. Merriman. 

Sir Francis Newton. 

Mr. F. J. Dormer. 

Mr. Robert Williams. 

Miss Alexander. 

Sir William and Lady Solomon. 

Sir Lionel Phillips. 



II. MS. Authorities 

The Rhodes Trustees possess a large quantity of letters, etc. 
addressed to Rhodes, his letter-books, copies of his telegrams, and 
various other papers relating to him. Unfortunately most of his 
early papers were destroyed in the fire at Groote Schuur in 1896. 
Some of his most characteristic utterances are contained in the 
telegrams, by means of which he conducted a large part of his 
business. Towards the end of his life he had a great distaste for 
writing letters himself, but in many of those dictated to his secretaries 
his actual words are given in inverted commas. 

The Rhodes Trustees generously gave me unrestricted permission 
to see and make copies of all the papers in their possession. For 
their generosity I owe them deep gratitude. 

331 



332 CECIL RHODES 

The late Mr. C. D. Rudd allowed me to see and copy a number 
of letters addressed to him by Rhodes, ranging in date from 1874 
to within two years of his death. These are especially useful for 
the Kimberley days. 

To Miss Rhodes I owe the very interesting letter quoted in Chapter 
IV,, and the sight of some other early letters, etc. 

III. Published Books on Rhodes 

MiCHELL, Sir Lewis. Life of Rt. Hon. C. J. Rhodes. 2 vols. 

1 910. (Indispensable for facts.) 
JouRDAN, Philip. Cecil Rhodes, His Private Life. 1911. 
Le Sueur, Gordon. Cecil Rhodes. 1913. 

(The last two give personal touches by former private 

secretaries.) 
Radziwill, Catherine, Princess. Cecil Rhodes, Man and 

Empire-Maker. 191 8. (Not of much account.) 
CoLViN, Ian. C. J. Rhodes. 1912. (A slight but good sketch.) 
Frost, A. S. C. /. Rhodes. 1902. (Slight.) 
De Waal, D. C. With Rhodes in Mashonaland. 1896. (Most 

useful.) 
" Imperialist." Cecil Rhodes. 1897. (Chiefly interesting for 

two chapters of reminiscences by Jameson.) 
Hensman, H. Cecil Rhodes. 1901. (Many useful facts.) 
Dormer, F. J. Vengeance as a Policy in Afrikanderland. 1901. 

(Gives interesting, if unfavourable, view of the later Rhodes.) 
Fuller, Sir Thomas. Rt. Hon. C. J. Rhodes. 1910. (A most 

valuable Memoir.) 
" Vindex." Cecil Rhodes, His Political Life and Speeches. 1900. 

(Indispensable for the speeches.) 
Stead, W. T. The Last Will and Testament of Cecil J. Rhodes. 

1902. (Valuable as an exposition of Rhodes 's aims.) 

Useful sketches of Rhodes are also to be found in : 

Wilson, Lady Sarah. S. African Memories. 1909. 
Menpes, Mortimer. War Impressions. 1901. 
Leonard, A. G. How We Made Rhodesia. 1896. 
Alexander, E. Primate Alexander, A Memoir. 191 3. 
Berdrow, W, Buch beriihmter Kaufieute. Leipzig, 1905. 
Fort, G. Seymour. Dr. Jameson. 1908. 
Robinson, Sir John. Notes on Natal. Durban, 1872. 
Williams, Sir Ralph. How I Became a Governor. 1913. 
Paladini, Carlo. Interviste {Rhodes, etc.). Firenze, 1902. 
Van Goch, H. A. Weerstaat den Rhodesgeest. Dordrecht, 1900. 
Laurence, P. M. On Circuit in Kaffirland. 1903. 
Scully, W. C. Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer. 1913. 
Proceedings at Unveiling of Rhodes Memorial Tablet. Oxford, 1907. 
Hutchinson, G. T. Frank Rhodes, A Memoir. (Privately printed.) 
1908. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 

Parkin, G. R. The Rhodes Scholarships. 1912. 

Cook, E. T. Edmund Garrett. 1909. 

Hansard and The Times are essential ; and for Rhodes 's speeches 

during his term of office as Prime Minister the Cape Hansard 

is necessary. 

At least two novels have been based on Rhodes 's story : 

Hope (Hawkins), Anthony. The God in the Car. 2 vols. 1894. 
Roberts, Morley. The Colossus. 1899. 

Olive Schreiner's Trooper Peter Halket, 1897, is a bitter attack 
on Rhodes's native policy. 

Innumerable Magazine articles have been published about 
Rhodes. Among these may be singled out articles by : 

CusT, H. N. American Rev. July, 1902. 

Various Authors. Diamond Fields Advertizer, Christmas Nos. 

1906 and 1907. 
Warren, Sir C. Contemporary. May, 1902. 
Low, Sir Sidney. Nineteenth Century and After. May, 1902. 
Witt, R. C. Nineteenth Century and After. May, 1902. 
Thomas, E. N. Empire Review. Aug. and Sept., 1902. 
Sauer, Dr. H. Empire Review. May, 1902. 
Baker, H. Nineteenth Century and After. January, 1920. 

The articles on Rhodes in the D.N.B. by Charles Boyd and in the 
Ency. Brit, by Lady Lugard should also be consulted. 

IV. South African History 

A most valuable book for the student of S. African history and 
literature is S. Mendelssohn's S. African Bibliography (2 vols., 1910). 
During his lifetime Mr. Mendelssohn allowed me to read many 
otherwise inaccessible books in his library, on which his bibliography 
is chiefly based ; since then the library has been bequeathed to the 
Union of S. Africa. 

Among general histories are : 

Theal, G. M. History of S. Africa, 1486-1872. 5 vols. 1888-93. 

History of S. Africa, 1795-1894. 5 vols. 1908. 

5. Africa. 1894. 
Lucas, C. P. Historical Geography of S. Africa. 1897, 1904. 
WoRSFOLD, B. S. Africa. 1895. 

Lord Milner's Work in S. Africa. 1906. 

Reconstruction of New Colonies under Lord Milner. 191 3. 
WiLMOT, A. History of Our Own Times in S. Africa. 3 vols. 

1897-99. 
Cory, G. E. The Rise of S. Africa {to 1857). 3 vols. 1919. 
Leyds, W. J. First Annexation of the Transvaal. 1906. 

The Transvaal Surrounded. 191 9. 



334 CECIL RHODES 

TiLBY, A. Wyatt. S. Africa, 1486-1913. 1914. 
Bryden, H. a. a History of S. Africa. 1904. 
The Natives of S. Africa. 1901, 
The S. African Natives. 1909. 

Amery, L. S. (general editor). " The Times" History of the War 
in S. Africa. 7 vols. 1900-1909. 

Political Biographies. 

Martineau, J. Life of Sir Bartle Frere. 2 vols. 1895. 

MoLTENO, P. A. Life and Times of Sir J. C. Molteno. 2 vols. 
1900. 

WiLMOT, A. Life and Times of Sir R. Southey. 1904. 

Kruger, S. J. Paul. Memoirs. 2 vols. 1902. 

Van Oordt, J. F. P. Kruger en de Opkomst der Z.A.R. Amster- 
dam. 1898. 

HoFMEYR, J. H., and Reitz, F. W. Life of J. H. Hofmeyr [Onze 
Jan). Cape Town, 191 3. 

Mackenzie, W. D. John Mackenzie. 1902. 

O'Brien, R. Barry. Life of C. S. Parnell. 1910. 

V. Special Periods 
(i) The Diamond Fields. 

Diamond Fields Advertizer. Christmas Number, 1901. 

Anciaux, Gabriel. Puppets on Show. (? 1896.) 

Murray, R. W. Diamond Fields Keepsake. 1873. 

Knights of Labour of S. Africa, Manifesto of. 1892. 

Raymond, H. B. I. Barnato, A Memoir. 1897. 

Cohen, L. Reminiscences of Kimberley. 1911. 

Matthews, J. W. Incwadi J ami, Twenty Years' Personal Ex- 
perience of S. A. 1887. 

Williams, Gardner F. The Diamond Mines of S. Africa. New- 
York, 1902. (Most valuable.) 

Reunert, Th. Diamonds and Gold in S. Africa. 1893. 

Payton, Chas. a. The Diamond Diggings of S. Africa. 1872. 

(2) Gold-fields of S. Africa. 

Mathers, E. P. Golden S. Africa. 1887. 
Reunert, Th. See under Diamonds. 

Goldman, C. S. Financial History of Gold and other Companies 
of Witwatersrand. 1892. 
South African Mines. 3 vols. 1895—96. 
Baines, Thomas. The Gold Regions ofS.E. Africa. P. Elizabeth, 

1877. 
South Africa. (Majority Special Number.) 1910. 

(3) The Scramble for (S.) Africa. 

Hertslet, Sir E. The Map of Africa by Treaty. 3 vols. 
1909. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 335 

FiTZMAURiCE, Lord E. Life of 2nd Earl Granville. 2 vols. 

1905- 
Lowe, C. Prince Bismarck. 2 vols. 1885. 
BuscH, Dr. MoRiTZ. Bismarck, Some Pages from his History. 

3 vols. 1898. 
Robertson, C. Grant. Bismarck. 191 8. 
Rose, J. Holland. Development of European Nations, 1870-90. 

1905. 
Deville, M. Victor. Partage de I'Afrique. 1898. 
Keltie, J. Scott. The Partition of Africa. 1893. 



Government Publications. 

C. 4190. Angra Pequena. 1884. 
C. 4262. Angra Pequena. 1884. 
C. 4265. Angra Pequena. 1884. 



C. 5904. Africa No. 2. 1890. 
C. 6495. Africa No. 7. 1891. 



(4) Bechuanaland and Transvaal. 

Williams, Ralph. The British Lion in Bechuanaland. 1885. 
Mackenzie, John. Ten Years North of the Orange River. 1871. 
Austral Africa. 2 vols. 1887. 

Government Publications. 

C. 2308. Bechuanaland. 1878-79. 

C. 3419. Transvaal, 1882. 

C 3635. S. Africa. 1883. 

C. 3686. Transvaal. 1883. 

C. 3841, 3947, 4036, 4194, 4213, 4251. Transvaal. 1884. 

C. 4275, 4310, 4432, 4588. Transvaal. 1885. 

C. 4643, 4890. Transvaal. 1886. 

C. 7932. British Bechuanaland. 1896. 

C. 7962. South Africa. 1896. 

C. 8474. Transvaal (Drifts question). 1897. 

(5) Rhodesia, Pioneers, Matabele Wars, etc. 

Wills, W. A., and Collingridge, L. T. Downfall of Lo Bengula. 

1894. 
Blennerhasset, R., and Sleeman, L. Adventures in Mashona- 

land. 1893. 
Leonard, A. G. Hovo We Made Rhodesia. 1896. 
Thomas, T. M. Eleven Years in Central S. Africa. 1872. 
Hyatt, S. Portal. Diary of a Soldier of Fortune, (n.d.) 

The Northward Trek. 1909. 
Colquhoun, a. R. Matabeleland. 1893. 

Dan to Beersheba. 1908. 
Wood, J. G. Through Matabeleland. 1893. 
Knight Bruce, G. W. H. Memories of Mashonaland. 1895. 
Du ToiT, S. J. Rhodesia Past and Present. 1897. 
Grogan, E. S., and Sharp, A. H. From the Cape to Cairo. 1900. 



336 CECIL RHODES 

The B.S.A. Co. General Information, etc. 1889. 

Regulations for Pioneer Corps. Cape Town, 1890. 
Hone, Percy F. Southern Rhodesia. 1909. 
Selous, F. C. Travel and Adventure in S.E. Africa. 1893. 

Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia. 1896. 
Johnston, Sir H. H. British Central Africa. 1897. 

The Colonization of Africa. 1899, 

Britain Across the Seas — Africa, (n.d.) 
Duff, H. L. Nyasaland under the Foreign Office. 1906. 
LuGARD, F. D. The Rise of our E. African Empire. 2 vols. 

1893- 
Peters, Dr. Carl. The Eldorado of the Ancients. 1902. 
Mauch, Carl. Reisen in Inner en v. Siid-Afrika, 1 865-7 2. 

Gotha, 1874. 
Fox-Bourne, H. R. Mataheleland and the Chartered Co. 1897. 
Blunt, Wilfrid S. My Diaries, I. 1888-1900. 1919. 
Grey, Albert, Earl. Hubert Hervey, Student and Imperialist. 

1899. 
Darter, Adrian. The Pioneers of Mashonaland. 1914. 
Johnson, Lieut. -Col. F. " Reminiscences " in R. Sussex Herald, 

vol. iii. Lahore, 191 8. 
Hensman, H. History of Rhodesia. 1900. 
Thomson, H. C. Rhodesia and its Government. 1898. 
Cooper-Chad WICK, J. Three Years with Lo Bengula. 1894. 
MiLLAis, J. G. Life of F. C. Selous, D.S.O. 1918. 
Churchill, Lord Randolph. Men, Mines, and Animals in 

S. Africa. 1892. 

Government Publications. 



c. 


2220. 


Bechuanaland. 1878. 


c. 


4890. 


Transvaal. 1886. 


c. 


5237- 


Bechuanaland. 1887. 


c. 


5363. 


Bechuanaland. 1888. 


c. 


5588. 


S.A.R. 1888. 


c. 


5524. 


Bechuanaland. 1888. 


c. 


5918. 


Bechuanaland. 1890. 


c. 


7i7i> 


7190. S. Africa. 1893-94. 


c. 


7196. 


Mashonaland. 1893. 


c. 


7284. 


7290, 7383, 7555. B.S.A. Co 


c. 


8547- 


B.S.A. Co. 1897. 


c. 


9138, 


9323. B.S.A. Co. 1899. 



1894. 



The Directors' Reports and Proceedings at meetings of the British 
S. Africa Co. and the proceedings before the Privy Council on the 
Special Reference in the Matter of S. Rhodesia all throw light on the 
early history of Rhodesia. 

I have especially to thank the Directors of the B.S.A. Co. for 
kindly allowing me to see these and other papers in their possession, 
some of them of a confidential nature. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 

(6) The Raid. 

There is a large literature on this subject : the following books 
are specially useful : 

Garrett, F. E., and Edwards, E. J. Story of an African Crisis : 

the Raid. 1897. 
[Terrail, G.] Mermeix (pseud.). Le Transvaal et la Chartered, 

Paris, 1897. 
FiTZPATRiCK, J. Percy. The Transvaal from Within. 1899. 
Stead, W. T. Joseph Chamberlain, Conspirator or Statesman? 

1900. 
YouNGHUSBAND, F. South Africa of To-day. 1898. 
Jeyes, S. H. Mr. Chamberlain. 1903. 

Government Publications. 

C. 7933- Transvaal. 1896. 

C. 8380. 1897, (The Cape Inquiry.) 

H.C. 311. 1898. (The House of Commons Committee's Inquiry.) 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



1852. Jan. 16. Sand River Convention (S.A.R. established). 

1853. Feb. 9. L. S. Jameson b. 
July 5. CecilJ[ohn Rhodes b. 
Livingstone's first journey to Zambesi country. 

1854. March 11. Convention of Bloemfontein (O.F.S. estab- 

lished) . 
1854-6. [Crimean War.] 
1857-8. [Indian Mutiny.] 

1859. Inyati Mission founded by Moffat. 

1 861. Rhodes^ goes to Bishop Stortford Grammar School. 
1 86 1 -5. [American Civil War,] 

1864. [Schleswig-Holstein War.] 

1866. [Austro-Prussian War.] 

1867. First diamond discovered in South Africa. 
Mauch discovers gold at Tati. 

July I. [Dominion of Canada established.] 

1869. Basutoland declared British. 
Rhodes leaves school. 

1870. Kimberley dry diggings discovered. 
Sept. I. Rhodes lands at Durban. 

1 8 70-1. [Franco-Prussian War.] 

1871. Oct. 17. Keate award ; Griqualand West annexed. 
Rhodes goes to the Diamond Fields. 

1872. Cape Colony gets Responsible Government. 

1873. [Ashantee War.] 

April 30. Death of Livingstone. 

Oct. 13. Rhodes matriculates at Oxford. 

Nov. Death of Rhodes' s mother. 

1874. [Disraeli Prime Minister.] 

March. Rhodes returns to Kimberley. 
1876 (Ap.)-78 (June). Rhodes keeps terms at Oxford. 

1876. July. [Brussels Conference on Africa.] 

1877. Sir Bartle Frere Governor of Cape. 
Transvaal annexed. 

Sept. Rhodes' s first Will. 
1877-8. [Russo-Turkish War.] 

1878. Feb. Rhodes' s father dies. 

African Lakes Co. founded. I 



339^ 



Z 2 



40 CECIL RHODES 

[German African Society founded.] 
March 12. Walfisch Bay annexed. 

[Stanley returns from Africa. Congo Association founded. ] 
1879. [Afghan War.] 
Zulu War. 

1879. Jan. Rhodes in fight with Korannas near Christiana. 
March. Hofmeyr enters Cape House. 

Nov. Herbert Rhodes dies in Nyassaland. 

1880. [Gladstone's Second Ministry.] 

April I. Rhodes founds De Beefs Mining Co. 

Frere recalled ; Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor of 

Cape. 
Oct. Griqualand West incorporated in Cape Colony. 
Nov. Rhodes elected for Barkly West. 
Dec. Transvaal War begins. 

1881. Feb. 27. Majuba. 

April 19. Rhodes' s maiden speech on Basutoland. 

Aug. 3. Convention of Pretoria restores independence to 

Transvaal. 
Oct. Rhodes' s last term at Oxford : takes degree (Dec). 
Nov. [Charter to British North Borneo Company.] 

1882. Stellaland and Goshen founded in Bechuanaland. 
Rhodes meets Gordon in Basutoland. 

[Arabi's revolt ; Tel-el-Kebir.] 

1883. April. Rhodes visits Stellaland. 

May. Germans occupy Angra Pequefla. 
Aug. Rhodes' s first speech about Bechuanaland. 

1884. Feb. Basutoland transferred to Imperial Government. 
Feb. 27. Convention of London with S.A.R. 
March-May. Rhodes Treasurer of the Cape. 

June. Granville admits German claim to Angra Pequefta. 
Aug. Rhodes's mission to Stellaland and Goshen. 
Dec. Warren's expedition to Bechuanaland. 

1885. Jan. 24. Rhodes meets Kruger. 

Jan. 26. [Fall of Khartoum ; death of Gordon.] 
Feb. 26. Berlin Act regularizes scramble for Africa. 
June 30. Rhodes attacks Warren's conduct in Bechuanaland. 
Aug. [Independent State of Congo announced.] 
Sept. British Bechuanaland a Crown Colony ; Pro- 
tectorate over rest of Bechuanaland. 

1886. Gold discovered on Witwatersrand. 

[Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill defeated : Salisbury's 

Ministry formed.] 
July 10. [Charter to Royal Niger Co.] 
Nov. I. [Anglo-German agreement re East Africa.] 

1887. May. Rhodes acquires all holdings in De Beers mine. 
Rhodes founds Gold-fields of S. Africa. 

July 30. Grobler Treaty with Lo Bengula. 
[First Colonial Conference.] 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 341 

1888. Feb. II. Moffat Treaty with Lo Bengula. 
March. De Beers Consolidated Mines formed. 

Sept. 3. [Charter to Imperial British E. Africa Co. 

(I.B.E.A.).] 
Oct. 30. Rudd Concession granted by Lo Bengula. 

1889. March. First S. African Customs Union (Cape and O.F.S.). 
April 30. Rhodes applies for Charter. 

Sept. 21. Brit. Protectorate over Nyasaland. 

Oct. 29. Charter granted to British South Africa Co. 

Robinson replaced by Sir H. Loch as Governor of Cape. 

1890. March 6. Rhodes and Loch meet Kruger at Fourteen 

Streams. 
June 27. Pioneer expedition starts. 
July I. Anglo-German agreement re Zanzibar, East and 

Central Africa, and Heligoland. 
July 17. Rhodes Prime Minister of Cape. 
Sept. II. Pioneers reach Salisbury. 
Oct. -Nov. Rhodes's trip to Tuli and Pretoria. 
Nov. 15. Fight with Portuguese at Umtassa's Kraal. 

1 891. April. Adendorff Trek damped down by Kruger. 
May 14. Brit. Protectorate over Nyasaland. 
June 6. [Death of Sir John Macdonald (Canada).] 
June II. Anglo-Portuguese Treaty re African spheres. 
July. Jameson Administrator of Mashonaland. 
Rhodes's Bank Act passed. 

Sept. -Nov. Rhodes's first visit to Mashonaland. 

1892. [Gladstone's fourth Ministry.] 

Rhodes's negotiations to acquire Delagoa Bay. 

Rhodes's Franchise and Ballot Act passed. 

Aug. Transvaal National Union founded (Uitlanders) . 

1893. [Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill.] 
[Portal's Mission to Uganda.] 

May. Rhodes forms second Ministry. 

Kruger re-elected President. 

June 26. Natal given Responsible Government. 

July 18. Victoria affray starts Matabele War. 

Nov. 4. Chartered troops occupy Buluwayo. 

1894. Pondoland annexed to Cape. 
June. Protectorate over Uganda. 

Rhodes sends Hofmeyr and De Villiers to Ottawa Con- 
ference. 
Rhodes passes Glen Grey Act and Scab Act. 
Oct. Railway reaches Mafeking. 

Nov. Rhodes sees Kruger on railway and customs questions. 
Dec. Final agreement with Transvaal re Swaziland. 

1895. Feb. 2. Rhodes sworn of Privy Council. 
March. [I.B.E.A. surrender charter to Crown.] 
April. Tongaland annexed. 

Loch replaced by Sir Hercules Robinson. 



342 CECIL RHODES 

May. Chartered territories named Rhodesia by Proclamation. 
June. [Rosebery Ministry defeated ; Salisbury forms 

Ministry — Chamberlain Colonial Secretary.] 
Oct. Drifts incident. 

Nov. 1 6. Brit. Bechuanaland annexed to Cape. 
Dec. 29. Jameson's Raid. 

1896. Jan. 2. Jameson surrenders at Doornkop. 
Jan. 5. Rhodes resigns. 

March 24. Matabele Rebellion begins. 
June 26. Rhodes resigns from B.S.A. Board. 
Sept. -Oct. Rhodes' s indabas in Matoppos. 

1897. Feb. Rhodes before S. Africa Committee. 
Railway reaches Buluwayo and Umtali. 

Lord Rosmead (Robinson) replaced by Sir Alfred Milner. 
[Kitchener's advance on the Soudan.] 

1898. April. Rhodes restored to Board of B.S.A. Co. 

June. Cape elections ; Progressive party formed under 

Rhodes. 
Sept. 2. [Battle of Omdurman. — Fashoda.] 
Oct. 20. New O. in C. for Southern Rhodesia. 

1899. March. Rhodes sees Kaiser ; Telegraph agreement. 
May 2. Rhodes' s last speech to B.S.A. Co. 

June. Rhodes D.C.L. at Oxford. 
Bloemfontein Conference (Milner and Kruger). 
July I. Rhodes' s last Will. 
Oct. II. S. African War begins. 
Rhodes at Kimberley. 
Dec. 15. Colenso. 

1901. Jan. I. [Commonwealth of Australia established.] 

1900. Feb. 15. ' Relief of Kimberley. 
Feb. 27. Paardeberg. 

Oct. Rhodes's speech to S. African League. 

1902. Jan. 18. Rhodes leaves England for last time. 
March 26. Death of Rhodes, aged 49. 

May 31. Peace of Vereeniging. 
1904. July 14. Death of Kruger, aged 79. 
1909. Union of South Africa Act passed. 






INDEX 



Abdul Hamid sees Rhodes, 194, 233 
Abercorn, Duke of, 136, 163, 256, 

306 
Abercorn, Fort, 167, 198 
Aborigines Protection Society, 78, 

131 

Adderley Street, 59, 144, 219 
Adendorff trek, 154-7, 246, 249, 

272 
African Lakes Co., 165-6, 168 
Afrikander Bond : 

founded, 60-61, 67 

policy, etc., 67-8, 140-41, 156-7, 
184 sqq., 243, 294 

See also Hofmeyr, Rhodes 
Agriculture in Cape Colony, 19, 

193-5 
Alexander, Dr. (Primate of Ireland), 

42, 227-9 
Angola, 76, 167 
Angra Pequena, 76-8 
Aristotle, Rhodes's admiration for, 

40, 48, 50, 323-4 
Arnot, David, 22 
Atherstone, Dr. W. G. (Cape 

mineralogist), 15, 45 
Austral Africa Co., 127 
Austrahan federation, 222, 296 

Babyan, 288 

Baden - Powell, Major - General 

R. S. S., 317 
Baines, Thomas, 69, 107, 119 
Baker, Herbert, 220-22, 224, 230, 

232, 302-3 
Bangweolo, Lake, 165-6 
Bank Act, 203 
Banket formation, 108-9 
Banyai trek, 156 
Barberton goldfields, 85, 107 
Barkly, Sir Henry (Governor), 22-3 
Barkly West, 16, 22 

Rhodes M.L.A. for, 57, 183, 294- 

295 



Barnato, Barney : 

early success at Kimberley, 43-7, 

93 
forms Kimberley Central Co., 44, 

95-6 
character, 96-8 

duel with Rhodes, 96-104, 291 
in De Beers, 103, 114 
M.L.A., 103, 192 
and Rand, 109 
opinion of Rhodes, 103. 120 
Barolongs, 21-2, 71 
Barotseland, 134, 148, 166-8, 170, 

175. 308 
Basutoland and Basuto War, 18- 

20, 63-9, 148 
Batlapins, 21-2, 71 
Beal, Colonel, 286-7 
Bechuanaland : 

question of, 22, 69-90 

" Suez Canal into the interior," 3, 

22, 72, 117 
British (Crown Colony), 88, 116, 

130. 135 
incorporated with Cape Colony, 
89, 256 
Protectorate, 88, 129, 137, 252, 
256-8 
Bechuanaland Exploration Co., 123, 

129-30, 144 
Beira, 160, 1 70, 181,239, 285, 292, 308 
Beit, Alfred : 

devotion to Rhodes, 54, 252 
and De Beers, 98, 101-3, 114, 195 
at Witwatersrand, 108, no 
and Charter, 123, 130, 135, 171 
and Raid. 254-5, 277 
and Rhodes's fruit farms, 301-3 
trustee, 324 
Bell, Moberly, 235 
Benning and Martin's hotel, 27 
Bishops Stortford, 7 

Grammar School, 8-10 
Bismarck, Otto v., 74-7 



343 



344 



CECIL RHODES 



Blantyre, 239, 292 

Blignaut's Pont, 147 

Bloemfontein, 84, 141, 196, 244-5 

Blunt. Wilfrid S., 236-7, 283. 285 

Boomplaats, 18 

Booth, General, 182, 229-30, 238, 307 

Borckenhagen, Carl, 244 

Botha, Louis, 62 

Bowen, G., 148, 227 

Bower, Sir Graham : 

friendship with Rhodes, 58 
in Bechuanaland, 79 
Rhodes's letter to him, 146 
knowledge of Raid, 269-72, 280 
Bowler trek, 147 
Boyes, Lorenzo (diamonds), 15 
Brand, John (President O.F.S,), 

19, 21, 23-4, 66, 112, 254 
Bristol seat offered to Rhodes, 99 
British Bechuanaland Police, 148, 
176-7, 179, 254, 260, 262, 
266, 269 
British North Borneo Co., 122 
British South Africa Committee 

(H. of C). 36. 175. 277-85 
British South Africa Co. : 
Charter, etc., 130-39, 163 
directors, 135-6, 159, 163-4 
meetings of, 238-41, 306, 312 
shares and finance, 138, 142, 159- 

160. 192, 239-41 
connection with Raid, 255-6, 259- 

260, 274, 285 
See also Rhodesia 
British South Africa Police, 147, 
149-51, 159-60, 262, 265-6, 
269, 306 
Brocklehurst, General J. F., 320 
Bultfontein mine, 16-17, ^^' 93> 104 
Buluwayo, 123 sqq., 137, 181, 231 
occupation of, 177 
besieged, 285-7 
Burlington Hotel, 233, 251 
Buxton, Sydney (Lord), 235, 252, 
260, 279 

Canada, 199, 202, 222, 296 
Cannon Street Hotel, 238, 312 
Cape Colony : 

in 1871, 17-18 

" dominant state," 71, 73, 80, 
196, 198, 219, 321 
Cape Committee on raid, 277 
Cape poUticians, 58-60, 188-90 
Cape to Cairo railway, 236, 308-9 
Cape Town, i, 58-9, 231-2 



Cape Town (transport from), 31, 

158, 170, 183, 198 
Carnarvon, Earl of (Colonial Secre- 
tary). 24, 51, 56, 60. 76. 329 
Carrington. Sir F., 287 
Cawston, George, 129-30, 135 
Central Search Association, 130 
Chamberlain, Joseph : 

relations with Rhodes, 131, 136, 

240, 258 
becomes Colonial Secretary, 256-7 
negotiations about Bechuana- 
land, 259-63 
on Drifts question, 258-9 
and the Raid, 261-3, 272, 279-85 
referred to. 252, 300, 307, 309, 
321 
Charter, Fort, 150, 175 
Chartered Companies, 122, 134-5, 

235 
See also B.S.A. Co. 
Chibe, 154-5 
Chinde, 168 
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 4, 98, 

161, 240 
Civil Service Club, 59, 188 
Codrington, R., 306 
Coetzee (farmer), 226-7 
Colenbrander, J. (and Mrs.), 229, 

287-9 
Colesberg Kopje (Kimberley mine), 

17, 27-9 
Colquhoun, A. R., j&rst adminis- 
trator of Mashonaland, 52, 

149. 159. 160, 169 
Concession-hunters, from Lo Ben- 

gula, 125-129 
from Kruger, 247-8 
Congo Free State, 74, 181, 309-10 
Coryndon, R. T., 148, 306 
Cotton planting in Natal, 11-14 
Courtney, Leonard (Lord), 136, 

283 
Currey, J. B., 32, 35. 37, 59 
Currie, Sir Donald, 99, 100 
Cyanide process, 109 

Dalston property, 7, 238 
Damaraland, 69, 76-7, 274 
Darwin, Charles, Rhodes on, 49, 50 
De Beers Consolidated Mines : 
founded, 102 
trust deed, 103-4, in 
results, 105-7, 1 13-15, 131 
referred to, 129, 138, 192, 204, 
264, 274, 298, 301, 303, 317 



INDEX 



345 



De Beers Mining Co. : 
founded, 47, 56 
progress, 92 sqq. 

merged in Consolidated Mines, 
102 
De Beers New Rush, See Kimber- 

ley mine 
De Beers (Old) mine, 17, 36, 44-7, 

92-6, 100-102 
Delagoa Bay, 141, 155, 167 
Rhodes's attempt to buy, 198 
railway, 248-9 
De la Rey, Groot Adriaan, 82, 242, 

291 
Derby, Earl of (Colonial Secretary), 

78. 83 
Dernburg, Herr, on Rhodes, 2 
De Villiers, Sir Henry (Lord), 104, 

141, 164, 187, 199, 215-18 
De Waal, D. C, 151-4, 161 
Diamond Diggings and Mines, 13, 

15-32 
difficulties at, 44-5, 92-3 
amalgamation of, 92 sqq. 
See also De Beers, Kimberley 
Diamonds, price of, 29, 95, 102, 105, 

201 
Dilke, Sir Charles, 99, 132, 202 
Doornkop, 273, 286 
Doyle, Dennis, 170 
Drifts question, 258-60, 316 
Dudley, Lord (diamonds), 15 
Dutch and English relations, 19, 

20, 57, 60-61, 71, 79, 88, 

140-41, 185-6, 195-6, 221, 

294-7, 316 
Du Toit, Rev. S. J., 67, 82, 156 
Dutoitspan mine, 16-17, 26-7, 32, 

45. 93. 104 
Dynamite factories, 247, 298 

East London, 183-4 
Education in Cape Colony and 
Rhodesia, 195-6, 210, 213, 

230, 307 
Edward VII. (P. of W.). 228, 310 
Edwards, Sam, 125 
Escombe, Harry, 3, 209, 243-4, 296 
Exeter Hall, 98, 117, 179, 257 
Exploring Co., 123, 125, 127, 129-30, 

135 

Fairbairn (at Buluwayo), 124, 127 
Fairfield, E., 235, 261 
Faku, 289, 326, 329 
Faure, R. H., 186, 215 



Ferreira, Colonel, 157-8 
Fife, Duke of, 131, 136, 163, 167 
Fife, Fort, 167, 198 
Flag : for union of South Africa, 
67-8, 81, 156, 245 

incident, 253 

at Johannesburg, 263, 265, 267-8 
Forbes, P. W., 149, 169, 177 
Fourteen Streams, 84, 86 
Franchise and Ballot Act, 193, 203, 

205-7, 213 
French Company (Kimberley), 100 
Frere, Sir Bartle (Governor), 56, 

58. 70. 76, 77. 80, 117 
Froude, J. A., 30, 45, 60-61, 329 
Fruit farms, Rhodes's, 301-3 
Fry, John, 123 
Fuller, Sir T. E., 226, 278 

Garrett, F. E., 192 

Garstin, Norman, 31 

Gazaland, 167-8, 170 

German E. Africa, 166, 181, 200, 

310-11 
German S.W. Africa, 76-8, 200, 311 
Germany : 

designs, etc., in South Africa, 

74-8, 83, 87-9, 134, 166-7, 

197-8, 200, 254, 273-4, 311-12 

telegraph agreement, etc., 200, 

310-12 

Gibbon, Rhodes's admiration for, 

40, 50, 223 
Gifford, Lord, 129, 135 
Gladstone, W. E. ; 
Transvaal policy, 62 
on African expansion, 75 
Home Rule Bills, 133, 237 
talk with Rhodes, 132, 236-7 
Glen Grey Act, 3, 140, 193, 203, 

211-14, 223 
Gold discoveries in South Africa, 35, 
69, 85, 107, 122 
at Witwatersrand, 107-9 
" Gold Fields of South Africa " : 
founded, iii, 122 
Rhodes's profits on, in, 114 
referred to, 129-30, 135, 138, 155, 
192, 264, 274, 298 
Gold mines on Rand, 109-11 
Gold production on Rand, 109 
Goold Adams, Colonel H., 177 
Gordon, General Charles, and 
Rhodes, 52, 64-6, 91, 182, 
320 
Goshen, 72, 78-9, 81-4, 86, 88, 256 



346 



CECIL RHODES 



Gouveia, 168-9 
Grahamstown party, 116-23 
Great Kei River, 17-18 
Grey, Albert (Earl) : 

admiration for Rhodes, 5, 136, 
164, 182, 252, 292-3, 320-21, 
328, 330 
director of B.S.A. Co., 136, 163- 

164, 167 
on South African union, 243 
Administrator of Rhodesia, 286- 

293. 307 

trustee, 324 

referred to, 131, 222, 260, 304, 329 
Grey, Sir George (Governor), 70, 202 
Grimmer, J., 148, 232, 304 
Griqualand West, 13, 20, 22-4, 71-2 

incorporated with Cape Colony, 57 
Grobler Treaty, etc., 117, 1 19-21, 

125, 143, 146 
Groote Schuur, i, 2, 60, 267, 270- 
271, 285, 324 

account of, 219-27 

burnt down, 224, 293 
Gungunhana, 170 
Gwelo, 181, 287 

Haggard, A. W., 127, 129 
Haldane, R. B. (Lord), 228 
Hammond, J. Hays, 254 
Harcourt, Sir William, 201-2, 206, 

212, 236-7, 265, 279-81 
Harris, F. Rutherfoord : 

with Lo Bengula, etc., 128, 143, 

158 
and Raid, 255, 258-63. 265-8, 273, 
280 
Hartley (hunter), 107, 119 
Hawkesley, Bourchier F., 137, 241, 
255, 260, 280, 282, 321-2, 324 
Hawkins, H. C, 12 
Hebron mission station, 16 
Helm, Rev. C. D., 124, 173 
Herbert, Sir Robert, 130, 235 
Hervey, Hubert, 329-30 
Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 279, 309 
Hofmeyr, J. H. (Onze Jan) : 
alluded to, 58, 187 
sketch of his policy, etc., 60-61 
relations with Rhodes, 61-3, 66, 
140-41, 185, 187, 192-3, 215- 
218, 226-9, 233, 325 
on Basutoland, 63, 67-8 
and Afrikander Bond, 61, 67-8, 

294 and passim 
on Bechuanaland, 73-4, 79 



Hofmeyr, J. H. (Onze Jan) : 

favours Charter, 141, 157, 164, 

196 
on native policy, 206 
and Swaziland Convention, 147 
influence in Cape politics, 61, 184- 

185, 215-18 
refuses premiership, 185, 187 
at Colonial Conference, 199 
and Raid, 270, 272-3, 275 
on Germany, 273-4 
on South African union, 60, 67, 
197, 243-4 

Holden, Captain, 264, 268 

Humphreys, A. L., 223 

I.D.B., 32, 94, 207 

Imperial British E. Africa Co. 

(I.B.E.A.), 122. 169, 236 
" Imperial factor," 80-81, 99, 121, 

131, 197. 237-8 
Imperial policy in South Africa : 

re Griqualand West, 20-24 

re Basutoland, 63-4 

re Bechuanaland, 70 sqq., 256-9 
Indwe collieries, 184 
Innes, Sir James Rose — 186-7, 206, 

212 
Inyanga farm, 303-5 
Inyati Mission, 119, 121, 143 
Irish Home Rule, 133-4, 237 

Jameson, Dr. Leander Starr : 

at Kimberley with Rhodes, 54-5, 
57, 70, 103, 140 

with Lo Bengula, 128, 143, 149 

with Pioneers, 149 

stops Ferreira, 157 

Administrator of Mashonaland, 
160 

and Portuguese, 169-70 

and first Matabele War, 174-6, 179 

and the Raid, 255, 263, '265-77, 283 

Rhodes's love for, 54-5, 233, 252, 
271-2, 277, 293, 314 

his rehabilitation, 295 

trustee of will, 324 

at Rhodes's death, 325 

inheritor of Rhodes tradition, 5 

at Union Convention, 2, 297 
Joel, Woolf, 103 
Johannesburg : 

founded, 108-9 

flag incident, 253 

grievances. See Uitlanders 

rising at, 242 sqq. 



INDEX 



347 



Johnson, Frank, 125, 144-5, 147-8, 

150. 153 
Johnston, Sir Harry, 165-6 
Joubert, Piet, 83, 86, 119, 147 

Kaffraria, 18, 20 
Kalahari desert, 69, 127 
Keate award, 23, 70 
Kekewich, Colonel R. G., 317 
Kenilworth, model village, 105-6 
Khama, 88, 125, 129, 149, 151, 210, 

259 
Khartoum, 66, 309, 313, 318 
Kimberley : 

early history {see also Diamond 
Diggings), 17, 26 sqq., 43 
sqq., 69, 70 
results of amalgamation on, 3, 

106, 131 
amenities of, 231, 298 
mining school, 195-6 
siege of, 316-18 
Kimberley Central Co., 95, 10 1-4 
Kimberley Club, 98, 102, 144 
Kimberley, Earl of (Colonial 

Secretary), 17, 22-3, 58, 76 
Kimberley mine, 17, 27-9, 36, 44-5, 

47. 93. 95-6, 99-104 
Kipling, Rudyard, 225, 227 
Kitchener, H. H. (Lord), 233, 285, 

309-10, 312-13, 318 
KHpdrift (Barkly West), 16, 22 
Knight-Bruce, Rt. Rev. J. W. H., 
Bishop of Bloemfontein, 125, 

131 

Knights of Labour, 106 

Knutsford, Lord (Colonial Secre- 
tary), 123, 131, 135, 145, 

259 
Kokstad, 208-9, 214, 243-4 
Koopman, Mrs., 231 
Kosi Bay, 250 
Kruger, S. J. P. : 

early history, 84-6, 118 
views on Rhodes, 3, 86-7, 155 
breach of London Convention, 

82-3, 156 
meetings with Rhodes, 84, 86, 
111-12, 147, 153, 155, 248-9 
Rhodes on, 86, 249-50, 316 
policy ftf Matabeleland, 119, 147 
railway and tariff policy and 
Drifts question, 141, 196-8, 
244, 248-9, 258-9 
and Uitlanders, 1 12-13, 147, 246- 
248, 275 



Kruger, S. J. P. 
wants Swaziland, 119, 147, 155, 

250 
damps down Adendorff trek, 147, 

156, 249 
antagonism with Rhodes, 249-50 
and Raid, 268, 277-8, 296, 316 
and South African War, 316 
See also Transvaal 

Labouchere, Henry, 114, 131, 138, 

239, 279-81 
Lado Enclave, 181, 310 
Laing, John, 188, 192, 196 
Lawley, Sir Arthur, 307 
Lendy, Captain, 174-5 
Leonard, A. G., 151-4 
Leonard, C, 254 
Leopold II., 74, 310 
Lerothodi, 204 

" Letter of Invitation, "266, 269,273 
Lewanika, 166 
Leyds. J. W., 254 
Lippert, E. A., concession, 171-2 
Livingstone, David, 69, 70, 165-7 
Lo Bengula : 

sketch of, 124 

alluded to, 88, 118, 125, 129, 286 

treaty with Grobler, 117, 119 

and Moffat treaty, 121 

and Rudd concession, 123-8, 131, 
142-3, 149 

relations with Europeans, 124-6, 
172-3, 177 

messages to and from Queen, 127, 

134. 143 
tries to stop Pioneers, 150 
grants Lippert concession, 17 1-2 
war with B.S.A. Co., 172-7 
death, 177-8 
Loch, Sir Henry (Lord) (Governor) : 
sees Kruger, 147, 253 
relations with Rhodes, etc., 149, 

151-3, 156, 171. 175. 178, 
209-10, 252, 256 
and Matabele War, 175-6 
and Uitlanders, 254-5, 260 

Lodge, Senator, 201 

London Convention, 78, 82, 147, 258 

Lotchi, 128 

Louren90 Marques, 198 

Low, Sir Sidney, 55-6, 234-5 

Ludorf, Rev, J., 21-2 

Lugard, Sir F. D., 165-6, 168 

Macdonald, Sir John, 199, 202 



348 



CECIL RHODES 



M'Donald, J. G., 304-6 
Macequece, 169, 170 
Mackenzie, Rev. John, 70, 78, 117, 
132 
in Bechuanaland, 79-81, 83-4, 86- 

90 
opposes Charter, 130, 134 
on Pioneers, 145 
McKinley tariff, 114, 200-201, 239 
Mackinnon, Sir William, 122, 169 
Macloutsie, 148-51, 158 
M'Neill, J. Swift, 133 
Mafeking, 69, 71-2, 82, 137, 151, 
181, 190, 256, 265, 268-70, 
286, 317 
Maguire, T. Rochfort, 39, 53, 90, 
123-9, 134, 143, 177, 237, 
255, 260 
Majuba, 57, 61-2, 119 
Manicaland, 167-70 
Mankoroane, 71-3, 79, 88 
Mashonaland. See Rhodesia 
Mashonas, 117 sqq., 142 sqq. 
raided by Matabeles, 173-4 
rebellion, 291-2 
Matabeleland. See Rhodesia 
^ Matabeles, 86, 117 sqq. 
and Pioneers, 145, 150 
first war, 172-8, 202 
revolt, 285-91 
Matoppo Hills (dam and farm, etc.), 

231, 287-90, 304-6, 325-6 
Matthews, J. W. (diamonds), 25 
Mauch, Karl, 69, 107 
Maund, A. E., 127, 129-30 
Melsetter, 158 
Merriman, J. X. : 

at Kimberley, 30-32, 44, 57, 95 
relations with Rhodes, 31-2, 55, 
60, 70, 191-2, 200, 226, 231 
and Basutoland, 66 
and Bechuanaland, 73, 77-8, 80 
in opposition, 184-5 
Treasurer-General, 184-7 
native policy, 206, 212 
on the Raid, 275 
Metcalfe, SirCharles, 40, 53, 129, 308 
Methuen, Lord, 149, 317 
Michell, Sir Lewis, 324 
Mills, Sir Charles, 132 
Milner, Sir Alfred (Viscount), 299- 

301, 316, 320-21, 324 
Milton, Sir William, 232, 307, 

326 
Missionaries' road, 35, 69, 70, 72- 
73. 143. 261 



Moffat. J. S. (Treaty), 121, 123, 
125-6, 131, 134. 143. 166. i68 
Moffat, Robert, 69, 70, 119 
Molopo River, 88 
Molteno, Sir J. C, 59 
Montsioa, 71-2, 79, 82, 88, 151, 265 
MoseUkatze, 1 17-18, 121, 287 

his tomb, 231, 304 
Mount Hampden, 149-50 
Mozambique. 167 
Muizenberg, i, 325 

Namaqualand, 69, 76 

(Cape Colony), 294 
Natal : 

in 1871, 18, 25-6 

gets responsible government, 208 

references to, 2, 11, 208-9, 243- 
244, 249, 296 
National Union, 263 
Natives of South Africa : 

affected by diamond discoveries, 

19 

compound system, 94, 106, 204 
policy of various states, 205-6, 297 
franchise in Cape Colony, 140, 

205 sqq., 297 
See also Rhodes, Rhodesia, etc. 
Newcastle, Duke of (Colonial 

Secretary), 205 
Newcastle (Natal), 296 
New South Wales, 199, 200 
Newton, Sir Francis, 58, 269 
Ngami, Lake, 70 

Nyassa, lake and land, 134, 165-8, 
237 

Ons Land, 301 
Orange Free State : 
in 1871, 18-19 

claims to Griqualand West, 21-4 
and Basutoland, 63, 66-7 
customs and railway policy, 196, 

248 
treaty with Transvaal, 254 
Orange River, N. border of Cape 

Colony, 18, 20, 23 
O'Reilly, John (diamonds), 15 
O'Reilly, — , M.L.A., 189, 196 
Oriel College, Oxford, 37, iii, 313, 

324 
Oriel mine, 11 1 
Ottawa Conference, 199 
Owen, Sir Lanyon, 56 
Oxford, in Rhodes's time, 37-43 
See also under Rhodes 



INDEX 



349 



Paarl, the, 140, 151, 301 
Parker, Stafford (diamonds), 16 
Parkes, Sir Henry, 199 
Parnell, C. S., 133-4 
Peacock, Sophia, 9, 10 
Penfold, Captain, 59 
Pennefather, Colonel, 149 
Pickering, N. E., 53. 55, 70, 103 
Pickstone, H. E. V., 302-3 
Pinto, Serpa, 168 
Pioneers : 

selection and names of, 147-8 

expedition, 147 sqq. 
Pitsani, 262, 265-6, 268-70 
Plumer, H. C. O. (Lord), 286-8 
Pniel, 16, 21 

Pondoland, 203, 207-9, 213 
Poole's Hotel, 59, 145 
Port Elizabeth (transport from), 31, 
158, 183-4, 198 

welcomes Rhodes, 278-9 
Portuguese claims in Africa, 74, 76, 

134, 158-9, 167-70 
Pretoria, 155, 248, 253-4, 263, 272, 

316 
Pretoria Convention, 67, 71, 73 
Pretorius, President, 21-3, 119 
Pringle, Thomas, quoted, 26, 

50-1 
Progressive party, 294-5 
Providential Pass, 150 

Queenstown, 209, 213 

Radikladi, 149 
Raid (Jameson), 242 sqq. 
results of, 3, 274-5, 296, 316 
inquiries into, 277-85 
Railway strip, 259 sqq. 
Railways in South Africa, 18, 63, 
141-2, 181, 183-4, 193-4. 213, 
248-9, 262, 292, 308-9, 311 
See also Cape to Cairo railway 
Rawstorne of Colesberg Kopje, 17 
Reade, Winwood, Martyrdom of 

Man, 49, 50 
Reform Committee, 267 
Reform prisoners, 277-8 
Reitz, F. W., 245, 254 
Renny-Tailyour, E. R., 171 
Rhodes, Cecil John : 
A. Chronological : 

1854. Birth and family, 7-10 ; 

school, 8, 10 
1870-71. Cotton planting in 
Natal, 1 1 -14 



Rhodes, Cecil John : 

A. Chronological {contd.) : 
1871. To diamond fields, 13, 

25-9 
1871-80, Life at Kimberley, 

29-36 
1873-81. At Oxford, 37-43 
1874. Pumping contract at 

Kimberley, 45-6 
1877. Makes first will, 51-2 
1880. Founds De Beers, 44-7; 

M.L.A. for Barkly West, 

57 ; Ufe at Cape Town, 

58-61 
1881-83. Oil Basuto question, 

63-8 
1882-85. On Bechuanaland 

question, 70-90 
1885-88, Amalgamates dia- 
mond mines and founds De 

Beers Consolidated Mines, 

91-107, 113-15 
1885-90. Works with Bond 

in parliament, 140-41 
1886-88. On Rand : " Gold 

Fields of South Africa," 107- 

114 

1887. Visit to Grahamstown 
about the North, 11 6-21 

1888. Sends Rudd party to 
Lo Bengula, 123-7; sub- 
scribes to Irish party funds, 

133-4 
1888-89. Obtains Charter, 127- 

139 
1889-90. Organizes Pioneer 

expedition, 142-50 
1889-91. Secures N. Rhodesia, 

164-7 

1890. Prime Minister of the 
Cape, 183-6; visit to Tuli, 
etc., 151-155 

1 891 . Acquires Groote Schuur, 
219 sqq. ; first visit to 
Mashonaland, 1 60-62 ; passes 
Bank Act, 203 

1891-94. Tries to buy Delagoa 
Bay, 198 

1892. Passes Franchise and 
Ballot Act, 203-7 ' gets 
Lippert concession, 171-2 ; 
starts Trans-African Tele- 
graph, 181 

1893. Forms second ministry, 
187-8 ; and Matabele War, 
172-80 



350 



CECIL RHODES 



Rhodes, Cecil John : 

A. Chronological {contd.) : 

1894. Passes Scab Act, 193-6 ; 
Glen Grey Act, 3, 211-14 ; 
annexes Pondoland, 207-11 

1895. Privy Councillor, 180 ; 
Drifts dispute with Kruger, 
258-9 ; and the Raid, 243- 

275 

1896. Resigns office, 272 ; in 
Matabele rebelUon, Matop- 
pos indaba, 285-93 

1896-1901. Develops Rhodesia, 
291-2, 303-11 

1897. Gives evidence to H. 
of C. Committee, 277-85 ; 
reappears in Cape House, 
293-4 '> starts fruit farms, 

301-3 

1898. Cape elections, founds 
Progressive party, 294-5 

1899. D.CL. at Oxford, 312- 
314 ; makes last will, 321-4 

1 899-1900, Besieged in Kim- 
berley, 316-18 

1901. Speech to S.A. League, 
318-21 

1902. Death and burial, 324-6 

B. Relations with : 
Afrikander Bond, 140-41, 156- 

157. 185-98, 243, 294 
Herbert Baker, q.v. 
B. Barnato, 96-104 
Alfred Beit, q.v. 
Sir G. Bower, 58, 146, 269-70 
B.S.A. Co., directors, 163-4, 

306 ; shareholders, 138-9, 

238-41, 306, 312 
J. Chamberlain, q.v. 
Colonies, 199, 200, 240, 328 
Sir H. de Villiers, 141, 187, 

199, 215-18 
Sir C. Dilke, 132 
Dutch of S.A., 57, 61-3, 71, 

87, 89, 147, 158, 185-6, 195, 

226-7, 250, 275, 278, 294-5, 

319-20 
Edward VII. (P. of W.), 228, 

310 
English pohtical parties, 131- 

133. 235-8 
W. E. Gladstone, 132, 236-7 
General Gordon, 64-6 
Earl Grey, q.v. 
Sir Wm. Harcourt, q.v. 
J. H. Hofmeyr, q.v. 



Rhodes, Cecil John : 

B. Relations with (contd.) : 
Dr. Jameson, q.v. 

Lord Kitchener, q.v. 

President Kruger, q.v. 

Lo Bengula, 149, 178 

Sir H. Loch, q.v. 

Rev. J. Mackenzie, 79, 84, 86, 

90. 145 
T. R. Maguire, 39, 53, 90, 123, 

134, 237, 255, 260 
J. X. Merriman, q.v. 
Lord Milner, q.v. 
natives of S.A., 12, 14, 30, 94, 

106, 203-14, 287-91, 326, 

328 
newspapers, 58, 192, 234-5, 251 
Oxford, 4, 12, 37-43, 208, 212, 

232, 312-14, 321-4 
C. S. Parnell, 133-4 
Rhodesian Pioneers, 3, 157, 

160-62, 179-80, 292, 326, 328- 

330 
Sir H. Robinson, q.v. 
Lord Rosebery, 133, 236-7, 

323-4 
Lord Rothschild, 100, 235 
C. D. Rudd, q.v. 
Lord Salisbury, 165, 235, 317 
Schreiner family, 59, 188, 228, 

270-71. 275 
Sir G. Sprigg, 63, 187-8, 192, 

215-17, 233, 284 
W. T. Stead, q.v. 
The Times, q.v. 

Uitlanders, 254-5, 263-5, 267-8 
Queen Victoria, q.v. 
Sir Charles Warren, 9, 56, 83-4, 

87, 89, 90, 151 
William II., 274, 310-12 
women, 33, 228-9, 234 
George Wyndham, q.v. 

C. Characteristics, Views, etc, : 
aims, 50-57, 87, 120-21, 164, 

242, 329-30 
"The Great Amalgamator," 

115 
Anglo-Saxon race, 50-51, 55, 

322 
anti-gambling law, 32 
appearance, 11, 33, 151, 233-4, 

280, 319 
artistic tastes, 220-22, 224-5, 

230-32 
the ballot, 207 
the bar, 38 



INDEX 



351 



Rhodes, Cecil John : 

C. Characteristics, etc. (contd.): 
books, 40-42, 49, 50, 97, 222-4 
characteristics, 9, 33-4, 96-9. 

151-5, 219 sqq., 250-53, 315 

sgq. 
" The Colossus," 152, 281 
country gentleman class, 10, 

189, 210. 324 
doctors, love of, 2^1-2, 
education, 195-6, 210, 230, 307, 

322 
" equal rights," 211, 297 
farming, love of, 57, 193-5. 

301-6 
freemason, 39 
friendships, 5, 9, 12, 31-2, 39, 

40, 48, 53-5, 58-60, 98, 115, 

136, 226-7, 251-2, 295 
Hampstead property, 39 
" homes, more homes," 181, 

240 
impatience, 137, 168-9, 178-9, 

250-53. 315-8 
" imperial factor," q.v. 
imperial federation, 4-6, 51-2, 

133. 199, 202, 240 
letters and telegrams, 3, 10, 14, 
26-9, 32, 37-9, 46, 90, 97-8, 
no, 126-7, 168-9, 174, 178-9, 
187, 199, 200, 217-18, 245, 
269, 300-302, 308-9, 331 
loafers, 40, 57, 210. 308 
" looking at the comparative," 

153, 161, 230, 293 
money, value he attached to, 
36, 38, 52, 91, 113-15. 122, 
182, 192, 327, 330 
protectionist, 194-5, 202, 239- 

240 
rehgion, 49-51. 229-30 
South African, a great, 232-3 
speaking, method of, 66, 152, 

190-91, 240 
speeches, on Basutoland, 64, 66- 
67 ; on Bechuanaland, 73, 
79, 88-9 ; on N. expansion, 
120, 152, 156-7, 182 ; on 
Bond policy, 140 ; as Prime 
Minister, 190-214; to 
Rhodesians, 179, 292, 307 ; 
to B.S.A. Co., 238-41, 306, 
312 ; after Raid, 278-9 ; on 
S.A. union, 242-3, 245, 295- 
297 ; in 1898 election, 294-5 ; 
at Oxford, 313-14 ; to S.A. 



Rhodes, Cecil John : 

C. Characteristics, etc. (contd.); 
League, 318-20 ; extracts 
from, 35, 59 
summary of, 1-6, 326-30 
veld, love of, 25-6, 35-7, 153-4, 
292 
Rhodes, Frank, 7- 11, 14, 30, 31, 33, 

35. 37. 237, 264, 277 
Rhodes, Rev. F. W., 7, 8, lo-ii, 31 
Rhodes, Herbert, 7, 8, 11-13, 27, 
29-31. 35-6, 70, 107, 146, 204 
Rhodes, Louisa (Mrs.), 7, 8, 26 
Rhodes, Miss Louisa, 7, 277 
Rhodes, Samuel, 7 
Rhodes, William, 7 
Rhodes scholarships, 4, 321-4 
Rhodesia : 

name given, 180 
Northern, 164-7, 3^7'^ 
Southern, form of government^ 

180, 306-7 
development, 181, 291-2, 307-9 
customs clause, 202, 240, 306-7 
natives in, 204, 286, 307, 328 
mining regulations, 159, 161, 

328 
gold production, 122, 138, 159, 

181, 307 

See also B.S.A. Co., Mashonas, 
Matabeles, Nyassaland 
Ripon, Marquis of (Colonial Secre- 
tary), 176, 178-9, 235, 252, 
256-7, 259-60, 262 
Roberts, Field-Marshal Earl, 318 
Robinson, Sir Hercules (Lord 
Rosmead) (Governor) : 

alluded to, 76, 79, 147 

relations with Rhodes, 58, 84, 90, 
117, 252 

and London Convention, 78 

and Bechuanaland, 81, 83-4, 88, 
90 

consents to Moffat treaty, 116- 17, 
119-21, 126 

supports Charter, 131, 134-5 

speech on meddlers, superseded, 
81, 252 

Governor for second time, 252-3 

instructions re Johannesburg ris- 
ing, 260-63, 283 

ignorant of Rhodes's policy, 266, 
269 

action on Raid, 271-2 
Robinson, Sir John, 12, 243 
Robinson, J. B., 16, 108-10, 255 



352 



CECIL RHODES 



Rondebosch, i, 219 
Rooigrond, 72, 79, 82, 86 
Rosebery, Lord, 34, 133, 181, 236- 

237- 257. 309, 323-4 
Rothschild, Lord, 100, 132, 235 
Royal Niger Co., 122 
Rudd. C. D. : 

Rhodes's partner in De Beers, 31, 

36-9, 45-7. 92 
at Johannesburg, 108, iio-ii 
concession from Lo Bengula, 123- 

128, 131, 143, 168, 176 
applies for Charter, 135 
Ruskin, John, influence on Rhodes, 

41-2, 50 

St. John's (Pondoland), 207 

St. Lucia Bay, 250 

Salisbury (Rhodesia), 150, 158-61, 

168, 170-71, 174, 181, 286, 

292, 307-8 
SaUsbury, Marquis of, 134-6, 145, 

165-7. 235. 317 
Sargent, E. B., 307 
Sauer, Hans, 108, 287 
Sauer, J. W., 59, 183-8, 206, 212, 

215-7, 226, 294 
Scab Act, 193-5. 203, 213, 227 
Scanlen, Sir Thomas : 
Prime Minister, 63, 185 
and Basutoland, 64, 66 
and Bechuanaland, 73, 78, 80 
falls " on a bug," 77 
to Rhodesia, 192 
Schermbriicker, Colonel, 189 
Schreiner, Olive, 59, 228 
Schreiner, W. P., 59, 206, 215-6 
Attorney-General, 188, 258 
sees Rhodes after Raid, 270-71 
on Raid, 275 

leader of Bond party, 294 
Prime Minister, 321 
Scramble for Africa, 74-8, 166-70 
Scully, W. C, 31-3, 35 
Selborne, Earl of (Governor- 
General), 162, 308 
Selous, F. C, 69, 119, 177 

and Pioneers, 145-7, 149-50, 169- 
170 
Shangani River, 177 
Shaw, Miss Flora (Lady Lugard), 

235, 261 
Shippard, Sir Sidney, 51, 116, 121, 

124-7 
Shire Highlands and River, 165-6, 
168, 170, 181 



Shoshong, 69, 70 

Sigcau, 207-9 

Sivewright, Sir J., 142, 186-9, 196, 
198, 215, 233 

Sleaford, 9, 10 

Smith, Sir Harry (Governor), 18 

Smith, W. H., 134 

Solomon, Saul, 59, 206 

South African League, speech to, 
318-20 

South African Republic. Seg Trans- 
vaal 

South African War, 315-21 

Southey, Robert, 21-4, 32, 59 

Sprigg, Sir Gordon : 

defeated on Basuto War, 63 
at Goshen, 83 
second ministry, 182-5, 196 
attacks Rhodes, 188, 196 
in Rhodes's second ministry, 187- 
188, 192, 203, 208, 215-17 

233 
third ministry, 284 
tribute to Rhodes, 284 
Stanley, H. M., 74, 126 
" Star of South Africa," 15 
Stead, W. T. : 

account of Rhodes's aims, 49-50 
Last Will and Testament of 

Cecil J. Rhodes, 49 
trustee of will, 52, 53, 321, 324 
at Holloway, 98 
meets Rhodes, 132 
Rhodes's prophet, 132, 235 
referred to, 202, 238, 299 
Stellaland, 71-4, 78-9, 81-4, 86-8,256 
Stellenbosch, 60, 195, 301 
Stevenson Road, 166-7, ^^^8 
Struben brothers, 107-9 
Sutherland, Dr. P. C, 11, 13, 36 
Swaziland, 119, 125, 135, 147, 155, 
246, 250 

Table Mountain, i, 120, 206, 224-6, 

229, 231, 304, 319 
Tanganyika, Lake, 120, 166, 181, 

308-9 
Tariffs in South Africa, 74, 80, 141, 

194-7, 200, 202, 236, 243-4, 

248, 263-4, 295-6. 306 
Tati Gold Fields, 69, 107, 119, 125, 

143 
Taungs, 69, 71-2 
y' Telegraph, African Transconti- 
nental, 181, 191, 200, 236, 
239, 292, 309-11 



INDEX 



353 



Thabas Imamba, 287 

Theron, T. P., 192 

Thompson, F. R., 123, 127-8, 142, 

177 
Times, The : 

and Rhodes, 90, 99, 131, 138, 

197. 235, 237 
and the Raid, 261, 272-3 

Transkei, 203, 208, 210-13 

Transvaal (South African Republic) : 
in 1871, 19 

claims to river diggings, 20-23 
annexation of, 56, 61, 74 
and Bechuanaland, 69 sqq. 
and Matabeles, 118 sqq. 
franchise, 247 sqq. 
railway and tariff policy, 74, 80, 

141, 196, 248-9 
See also Kruger 

Tuli, 146, 149-53. 158, 174 

Tweed, John, 221, 231 

Uganda, 200, 236-7, 308-10, 313 
Uitlanders : 

grievances, 112, 246-8, 253-5, 

284, 316 
rising organized, 255, 263 sqq. ■ 
See also Johannesburg 
Umkomanzi (Umkomaas) River, 11- 

14, 96, 203 
UmtaU, 160, 170, 181, 231, 239, 292, 

308 
Umtassa, 169-70 
Union of South Africa : 

National Convention on, 2, 297, 

329 
Carnarvon's scheme for, 56 
See also Hofmeyr, Rhodes 
United Concessions Co., 130, 241 
U.S.A. and Rhodes, 114, 201, 

234 
University College, Oxford, 37 
Upington, Sir Thomas (Prime 

Minister, etc.), 59, 79, 83, 

185, 188, 192, 207 
Usher, 125 

Van der Byl, Mrs., 220, 228 

Van Niekerk, G. J., 71-2, 79, 81-3, 

87-8, 242 
Van Niekerk, Schalk, 15 
Van Pittius, Gey, 72, 81-3, 88 



Van Riebeeck statue and panel, i, 

221, 231 
Victoria, Queen, and Rhodes, 156, 

234. 320 
Victoria (AustraUa), 200 
Victoria (Rhodesia), 150, 174-6 

agreement, 176 
Victoria Falls, 309 
View of the World, 3, 304-5, 325 
Vorster, Barend, 154-7 
Voruitzicht (De Beers), 16-17, 44 
Vryburg, 71-2, 142, 151, 158, 161, 

190 

Walfisch Bay, 76, 200 
Wankie coalfields, 309 
Warren, General Sir Charles, 56, 70, 

83-90, 117, 151 
Waterboer (Griqua), 20-3 
Watts, F. G., " Physical Energy," 

etc., 225, 231, 328 
Wernher, Beit and Co., 101-2, 113 
Wesselton (Premier) minp, 105-6 
Westacre, 304 
Weston- Jar vis, E., 306 
WilUam II., Kaiser : 

telegram, 273-4, 316 

sees Rhodes, 310-12 
Williams, F. Gardner, 100, 105 
Wilhams, Sir Ralph, 87, 90, 117, 119 
Williams, Robert, 308 
Willoughby, Sir John, 149, 266 
Wilmot, Alexander, 223 
Wilson, Alan, 177-8, 231, 304 
Witwatersrand, described, 107-9 

See Gold, Johannesburg 
Wodehouse, Sir Philip (Governor), 

15. 119 
Wolff, Dr., 264 

Wood, Francis and Chapman, 125 
Wyndham, George, 279, 282-3, 3^4 

Yerburgh, Robert, 9, 37, 39 
Younghusband, Colonel Sir F., 267 

Zambesi, 69, 70, 80, 86, 118, 121, 
126, 137, 141, 165, 167, 170, 
182, 309 

Zanzibar, 165, 167 

Zimbabwe ruins, 161, 222 

Zuid-Afrikaan, 60 

Zulus, 18, 20, 1 1 7- 1 8 



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